ESTIMATION OF POSTMORTEM INTERVAL BY POSTMORTEM BIOCHEMICAL CHANGES

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Estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI) is one of the most important tasks in forensic medicine. Five autopsy organ tissues such as brain, lungs, heart, liver and kidneys were taken at the time of forensic autopsy from 20 known PMI cases with a range of postmortem intervals ranging from 1 to 120 hrs (the mean was 25.81 hrs) and the time-course of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression was measured. The human hepatoma-derived Hep 3B cell line was used as a control.The levels of VEGF increased linearly with the PMI up to 20 hrs in lung (r=0.95 and in kidney (r=0.89), and up to 15 hrs PMI in liver (r=0.88). The VEGF levels fell after 24 hrs PMI, and then remained stable. In brain, the levels of VEGF started to increase after 24 hrs PMI and increased linearly with PMI up to 40 hrs in brain (r=0.94) and then begin to fall. In heart, there was no clear correlation between the PMI and VEGF level. Some variations occurred in selected cases, such as the infant and asphyxial deaths.In conclusion, measurement of hypoxia-inducible levels of VEGF in various body organs appears to be a useful method of estimating the PMI up to 24 hrs in forensic medicine and pathophysiology. This method is alsoprobably applicable in ischaemia in clinical and basic medicine.