earticle

영어

Postmortem formation of alcohol is a well-known problem in forensic toxicology. N-propyl alcohol(n-PrOH) is important in deciding whether the ethyl alcohol(EtOH) is produced by putrefaction. It still has limitations in interpreting the alcohol consumption, although EtOH/n-PrOH (< 20) has been widely viewed as a marker of putrefaction. As non-oxidative metabolites of ethanol, ethyl glucuronide(EtG) and ethyl sulfate(EtS) have been used in indicating whether the alcohol was consumed in postmortem. This study was to assess the reliability of EtG and EtS in alcohol source distinction in postmortem case. For our routine method, EtOH and n-PrOH were analyzed on the headspace-gas chromatography with flame-ionization(HSGC- FID), the experiment of EtG and EtS was extracted with Amicon® Ultra 3kDa, and performed in liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In the result, the concentration of EtOH in the blood was 0.091%, n-PrOH was 0.0018%, EtOH/n-PrOH ratio was 50.5, and both EtG and EtS were below the low of detection(LOD; EtG 0.01 mg/L, EtS 0.004 mg/L). This study showed that EtOH/n-PrOH ratio led to false result of alcohol source distinction in the blood of postmortem, due to the opposite result with that of EtG and EtS. In conclusion, this case result showed that postmortem formation of alcohol was suspected.