Madea Burkhard
Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Bonn, Stiftsplatz 12, 53111 Bonn, Germany.
Forensic Sci Int. 2005 Jul 16;151(2-3):139-49. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2005.01.013. Epub 2005 Apr 21.
Numerous methods have been proposed in the last 60 years for the determination of the time since death by chemical means. Many of them were reviewed by Schleyer in his monograph on the determination of the time since death by means of thanatochemistry about 40 years ago and none of these early methods has gained any practical value since they do not meet the demands in practice (being precise, reliable, giving an immediate result). While the earlier studies were mainly carried out on blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) since the late 60s most investigations have been performed on vitreous humor (VH). This is mainly due to the fact that vitreous humor is topographically isolated and well protected, and thus, autolytic changes proceed slower compared to blood and CSF. The most studied parameter in VH is potassium and even nowadays reports on the postmortem rise of vitreous potassium are published, proposing new analytical methods or statistical evaluations. Chemical parameters studied for the determination of the time since death have to be differentiated according to the underlying process (catabolism, metabolic processes, pure autolysis and diffusion, putrefactive changes). In the present paper, recent studies on thanatochemistry are discussed regarding the underlying process, the analytical methods (for instance H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MR spectroscopy), immunohistochemistry), the studied fluid compartment, the statistical evaluation and the precision of death time estimation. The value of chemical methods for the determination of the time since death is up to now very limited. This is supported by the fact that field studies on the reliability and precision of death time estimation by chemical means are still scarce in the literature.
在过去60年里，已经提出了许多通过化学方法确定死亡时间的方法。大约40年前，施莱耶在他关于通过死亡化学来确定死亡时间的专著中对其中许多方法进行了综述，而这些早期方法都没有获得任何实际价值，因为它们在实践中无法满足要求（精确、可靠、能立即得出结果）。早期的研究主要是在血液和脑脊液上进行的，自60年代末以来，大多数研究是在玻璃体液上进行的。这主要是因为玻璃体液在解剖位置上是隔离的且受到良好保护，因此，与血液和脑脊液相比，自溶变化进展较慢。玻璃体液中研究最多的参数是钾，即使在如今，仍有关于玻璃体液钾死后升高的报告发表，提出了新的分析方法或统计评估。为确定死亡时间而研究的化学参数必须根据潜在过程（分解代谢、代谢过程、单纯自溶和扩散、腐败变化）进行区分。在本文中，将讨论关于死亡化学的最新研究，涉及潜在过程、分析方法（例如氢磁共振波谱法（1H MR波谱法）、免疫组织化学）、所研究的体液成分、统计评估以及死亡时间估计的精度。到目前为止，化学方法在确定死亡时间方面的价值非常有限。文献中关于通过化学方法估计死亡时间的可靠性和精度的现场研究仍然很少，这一事实也证明了这一点。
