Characterization of drug disposition in skeletal tissues - a forensic context

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In many notorious death investigations, the remains under investigation have decomposed to the point of partial or complete skeletonization. In such cases, elucidating the role of drugs or poisons in the events leading up to or associated with the death is extremely challenging. Conventional toxicological analyses, usually done on fluids such as blood or urine, or tissues such as liver, are often not possible. In these cases, analysis of skeletal tissues (mineralized bone and/or bone marrow) may be the only remaining option.  This research program will address this problem through characterization of drug concentrations in skeletal tissues in a forensic context.Animal models will be used to investigate the concentration of drug in bone tissue under various conditions of drug administration, bone type and postmortem environmental conditions. Different drugs of forensic relevance will be examined to better understand the effect of variations in the chemical properties of the drugs on the observed concentration in bone tissue. The results of this research will provide insight into how long after exposure a given drug may be detected in bone tissue, the stability of drugs within postmortem skeletal tissues, bone drug concentration ranges expected following exposure to a given dose as well as the optimal bone type, and location within a particular bone, for skeletal drug analysis. This work serves as a basis for extension to studies with human tissues. Once this data has been collected, work may begin in its application to relevant cases within the justice system.