Comparative Study of Blood Metal Levels in Post-Mortem and Living Population Samples from Dammam, KSA

Abstract

Post-mortem testing of drugs and toxic agents is becoming an increasingly indispensible part of the forensic pathology routine that has recently made considerable progress. However, little attention has been given to the post-mortem blood and tissue metal levels compared to reference values of living population. Therefore, this study was designed to determine the post-mortem blood levels of arsenic (As), selenium (Se), silver (Ag), cadmium (Cd), antimony (Sb), mercury (Hg), thallium (Ti) and lead (Pb) and to compare their levels with the measured reference values from a living population sample. Moreover, the relationship between the post-mortem blood metal levels and the post-mortem interval (PMI) was investigated. Two hundreds and twelve post-mortem femoral blood samples were collected from autopsied cases at the Forensic Medicine centre in Dammam Saudi Arabia. In addition, a living population sample of 200 subjects was recruited from the same region. The blood metal levels were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The calculated means for blood As, Se, Ag, Cd, Sb, Hg, Ti and Pb were 2.7, 10.16, 3.38, 12.06, 1.61, 5.49, 1.33, and 13.5 μg/dl respectively. Blood Cd, Hg and Pb levels were significantly higher in the post-mortem samples compared to the living population with p values 0.001, 0.001 and 0.02 respectively. Moreover, there were statistically significant differences among post-mortem blood Cd and Pb levels with regard to post-mortem interval (PMI) which could be attributed to post-mortem redistribution (PMR).