Assessing the applicability of cerebrospinal fluid collected from the spinal cord for the determination of ethyl alcohol in post-mortem toxicology

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study on the applicability of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collected from the spinal canal in the post-mortem determination of ethyl alcohol. The present study reviewed data of autopsy cases (n = 45), in which ethyl alcohol was detected in CSF using gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector (HS-GC-FID), to investigate ethyl alcohol concentrations in CSF, compared with blood. As a result of statistical analysis of the obtained data, a high positive correlation was found between blood ethanol concentration and cerebrospinal fluid collected from the spinal canal ethanol concentration. The Pearson correlation coefficient was statistically highly significant (p < 0.001) (r = 0.9503). The data obtained allowed us to conclude that cerebrospinal fluid collected from the spinal canal can be collected during an autopsy as an alternative biological specimen to assess the ethanol content. Cerebrospinal fluid collected from the spinal canal can corroborate and lend credibility to the results obtained for blood and, in special cases, when blood is drawn from putrefied bodies and may even be a superior specimen to blood for assessing ethyl alcohol intoxication status.

Evaluation of core Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease in saliva and plasma measured by chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassays on a fully automated platform

“…Speci cally, according to the National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer's Association (NIA-AA) criteria, the AD diagnosis can be made, independently from the clinical stage, by detecting low CSF Aβ42 and Aβ42/40 ratio and high CSF pTau and tTau levels [5]. However, the use of CSF biomarkers in clinical practice is hampered by several issues, especially the invasiveness and the need for specialized personnel for CSF collection [5][6][7][8][9]. Thus, intensive research is ongoing to nd alternative, noninvasive, and widely accessible biological matrices to measure AD core biomarkers.…”

Ethanol and Higher Alcohols’ Production in Fungal and Bacterial Laboratory Cultures and Significance for Forensic Samples

“…In such cases, the interpretation of relative results may present limitations and complexities mainly due to the postmortem ethanol neo-formation (which is actually microbial ethanol production) [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ] at the interval from death up to the analysis of the sample. To achieve a feasible accuracy in interpreting the postmortem ethanol analysis results and in defining the origin (whether it is a result of antemortem consumption or postmortem microbial production or both) of the measured ethanol, various factors have been evaluated [ 5 , 10 , 11 ], such as the putrefaction state of the cadaver at autopsy, the clinical history of the deceased, the determination of non-oxidative metabolites of ethanol, the identification of microbes in the analyzed sample, and the evaluation of the discrepancies between ethanol concentration from various sampling sites and from different specimens [ 5 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Furthermore, the detection of low-molecular-weight volatiles in postmortem specimens was related to the microbial ethanol neo-formation [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”