Post-Mortem Dental Profile as a Powerful Tool in Animal Forensic Investigations—A Review

Viciano, Joan; López-Lázaro, Sandra; Tanga, Carmen

doi:10.3390/ani12162038

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 253 publications

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“…Moreover, the condition of the tissues is negatively affected by the ambient conditions, and the internal organs could be pathologically altered. Nonetheless, its advantages are good reasons to use this method in forensic-veterinary and forensic investigations (Viciano et al, 2022), etc.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The classical methods are those most commonly used today, such as visual-palpatory, thermometry (Jeong et al, 2020); various biochemical methods, namely studying expression and concentration of proteins in the skeletal muscles (Saber et al, 2021;Piegari et al, 2023), concentrations of various substances in the vitreous body of corpse eyes (Garland et al, 2020;Perez-Martínez et al, 2020;Ave et al, 2021;De-Giorgio et al, 2021;Nioi et al, 2021;Rajamani et al, 2021;Sarkisova, 2021); methods of image analysis, such as computer tomography (Watson & Baucom, 2020;Yamada et al, 2023), magnetic resonance imaging (Sapienza et al, 2020;Yitbarek & Dagnaw, 2022;Zhang, 2022), and elastography (Garczynska et al, 2021). Other common methods are forensic-entomological examination (Byrd & Sutton, 2020;Byrd & Sutton, 2021;Ivorra et al, 2021;Matuszewski, 2021;Weidner & Hans, 2021;Ashraf, 2022), forensic taphonomy (Miles et al, 2020), DNA studies (Mori et al, 2021;Heba El-Sayed et al, 2023), and dental profiling (Viciano et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Identification of time of death of cats according to histological changes in some organs

Serdioucov,

Shkundia,

Kruchynenko

2023

Regul. Mech. Biosyst.

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Determining the time of an animal’s death is an extremely relevant subject in the practice of modern forensic medicine, because the issue often arises when investigating crimes related to animal abuse, in particular, with domestic cats Felis silvestris catus (Linnaeus, 1758). Methods of identifying time of cats’ death are currently developed insufficiently and their introduction into the veterinary-forensic practice has been limited, including the histological method we have employed. We used five corpses of cats, from which we periodically, after certain time periods, gathered the material for histological study, sampling such organs as the liver, kidneys, lungs, heart (myocardium), and the skeletal muscles. From the collected material, we made histological sections and stained them with hematoxylin and eosin. We determined the general patterns in changes occurring in the internal organs of cats over time, namely changes in the staining intensity of the cell elements and intercellular structures on the histopreparations; formation of detritus-filled cavities; a number of distinctive changes in the connective-tissue stroma of the organs; emergence of baciliform bacteria in the tissues and formation of their colonies. In the muscle tissue, we found specific features such as loss of alignment and emergence of transversal grooves with subsequent fragmentation. The study revealed that the development of those changes in each organ clearly correlated with time that has passed since each animals had died. Thus, a complex evaluation of detected changes can give a more accurate – compared with other existing methods – assessment of the time of death of a corpse submitted to forensic veterinary examination. We recommend using the histological method for animals presumed to have been dead for no more than 18 days, because later the tissue disintegration reaches such a level that complicates the correlation of changes with time. We consider it promising to study the time of death of domestic cats using other methods for identifying criteria for postmortem intervals longer than 18 days, and also identifying time of death in other species of animals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of time of death of cats according to histological changes in some organs

Serdioucov,

Shkundia,

Kruchynenko

2023

Regul. Mech. Biosyst.

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“…J. Viciano et al (2022) considered one of the most common issues -determination of the time of animal death. The need to determine the time of death of cats may be related to the need to obtain information necessary for inquiry and investigation periods during 27 days from the moment of animal death were explained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determination of the time of death of a domestic cat by measuring the area of a wet spot

Shkundia,

Serdioucov

2024

Ukrainian journal of veterinary sciences

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Animal cruelty is a criminal offence under the current legislation of Ukraine. When investigating criminal proceedings related to animal cruelty, including domestic cats, it is often necessary to establish the time of death. Therefore, the development of new methods for determining it and improving existing ones is extremely relevant. The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between the obtained values of wet spot area indicators and the time of death. To achieve this goal, the authors propose a new method for determining the age of death of domestic cats based on the results of measuring the area of a wet spot obtained from skeletal muscle tissue samples of corpses (Shkundia method). To do this, samples of muscle tissue were taken from the corpses of cats, a wet spot preparation was obtained by pressing and its area was calculated to establish a correlation between the values of this indicator and the time that has passed since death. The study of the obtained indicators established that these values are constant, and the features of fluctuations in the values of this indicator with the time elapsed since the death of the animals were established and shown graphically. Using a number of statistical methods, the absence of dependence of wet spot area indicators on the muscles from which samples were taken for research and animal breeds was determined. The nature of changes in the values of the wet spot area indicator depending on time is established and the features of their fluctuations in different periods during 27 days from the moment of animal death were explained. Reference values of these indicators depending on the time elapsed since the death of animals are presented, which can be used by forensic veterinary experts in practical work to determine the time of the occurrence of death of domestic cats. Due to a number of advantages, this method can be widely implemented in the practice of forensic veterinary medicine

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“…Similarly, the annual cycle of depositing a new layer of dentin (Lockyer, 1993; Lockyer et al ., 2007) or cementum (Wittwer‐Backofen, Gampe & Vaupel, 2004) on teeth can be used to determine the age of mammals. Tooth cementum annulation (TCA; reviewed in Viciano, López‐Lázaro & Tanga, 2022) was first documented across diverse species of mammals and reptiles in the 19th century (Owen, 1840) and has been a reliable method of age estimation in animals for nearly 75 years. TCA has been used to determine the age of more than a hundred species in the class Mammalia alone: across 10 orders and 38 families (see online Supporting Information, Table S1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biological clocks as age estimation markers in animals: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

et al. 2023

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Various biological attributes associated with individual fitness in animals change predictably over the lifespan of an organism. Therefore, the study of animal ecology and the work of conservationists frequently relies upon the ability to assign animals to functionally relevant age classes to model population fitness. Several approaches have been applied to determining individual age and, while these methods have proved useful, they are not without limitations and often lack standardisation or are only applicable to specific species. For these reasons, scientists have explored the potential use of biological clocks towards creating a universal age‐determination method. Two biological clocks, tooth layer annulation and otolith layering have found universal appeal. Both methods are highly invasive and most appropriate for post‐mortem age‐at‐death estimation. More recently, attributes of cellular ageing previously explored in humans have been adapted to studying ageing in animals for the use of less‐invasive molecular methods for determining age. Here, we review two such methods, assessment of methylation and telomere length, describing (i) what they are, (ii) how they change with age, and providing (iii) a summary and meta‐analysis of studies that have explored their utility in animal age determination. We found that both attributes have been studied across multiple vertebrate classes, however, telomere studies were used before methylation studies and telomere length has been modelled in nearly twice as many studies. Telomere length studies included in the review often related changes to stress responses and illustrated that telomere length is sensitive to environmental and social stressors and, in the absence of repair mechanisms such as telomerase or alternative lengthening modes, lacks the ability to recover. Methylation studies, however, while also detecting sensitivity to stressors and toxins, illustrated the ability to recover from such stresses after a period of accelerated ageing, likely due to constitutive expression or reactivation of repair enzymes such as DNA methyl transferases. We also found that both studied attributes have parentally heritable features, but the mode of inheritance differs among taxa and may relate to heterogamy. Our meta‐analysis included more than 40 species in common for methylation and telomere length, although both analyses included at least 60 age‐estimation models. We found that methylation outperforms telomere length in terms of predictive power evidenced from effect sizes (more than double that observed for telomeres) and smaller prediction intervals. Both methods produced age correlation models using similar sample sizes and were able to classify individuals into young, middle, or old age classes with high accuracy. Our review and meta‐analysis illustrate that both methods are well suited to studying age in animals and do not suffer significantly from variation due to differences in the lifespan of the species, genome size, karyotype, or tissue type but rather that quantitative method, patterns of inheritance, and environmental factors should be the main considerations. Thus, provided that complex factors affecting the measured trait can be accounted for, both methylation and telomere length are promising targets to develop as biomarkers for age determination in animals.

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Post-Mortem Dental Profile as a Powerful Tool in Animal Forensic Investigations—A Review

Cited by 7 publications

References 253 publications

Identification of time of death of cats according to histological changes in some organs

Identification of time of death of cats according to histological changes in some organs

Determination of the time of death of a domestic cat by measuring the area of a wet spot

Biological clocks as age estimation markers in animals: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

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