Zeng Yan, Tao Li, Ma Jianlong, Han Liujun, Lv Yehui, Hui Pan, Zhang Heng, Ma Kaijun, Xiao Bi, Shi Qun, Xu Hongmei, Chen Long
Department of Forensic Medicine, Schoolof Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, 131 Dongan Road, Shanghai, 200032, People's Republic of China.
Criminal Investigation Department of Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, Shenzhen Insitute of Criminal Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518000, China.
Int J Legal Med. 2018 May;132(3):655-665. doi: 10.1007/s00414-017-1616-4. Epub 2017 Jun 17.
The incidence of death by asphyxia is second to the incidence of death by mechanical injury; however, death by mechanical asphyxia may be difficult to prove in court, particularly in cases in which corpses do not exhibit obvious signs of asphyxia. To identify a credible biomarker of asphyxia, we first examined the expression levels of 47,000 mRNAs in human cardiac tissue specimens from individuals who died of mechanical asphyxia and compared the expression levels with the levels of the corresponding mRNAs in specimens from individuals who died of craniocerebral injury using microarray. We selected 119 differentially expressed mRNAs, examined the expression levels of these mRNAs in 44 human cardiac tissue specimens of individuals who died of mechanical asphyxia, craniocerebral injury, hemorrhagic shock, or other causes. That the expression of dual-specificity phosphatase 1 (DUSP1) and potassium voltage-gated channel subfamily J member 2 (KCNJ2) was upregulated in human cardiac tissues from the mechanical asphyxia group compared with control tissues, regardless of age, environmental temperature, and postmortem interval (PMI), indicating that DUSP1 and KCNJ2 may be associated with mechanical asphyxia-induced death and can thus serve as useful biomarkers of death by mechanical asphyxia.
窒息死亡的发生率仅次于机械性损伤死亡的发生率；然而，机械性窒息死亡在法庭上可能难以证明，尤其是在尸体未表现出明显窒息迹象的案件中。为了确定一种可靠的窒息生物标志物，我们首先检测了死于机械性窒息的个体心脏组织标本中47000种mRNA的表达水平，并使用微阵列将其与死于颅脑损伤的个体标本中相应mRNA的水平进行比较。我们选择了119种差异表达的mRNA，检测了这些mRNA在44例死于机械性窒息、颅脑损伤、失血性休克或其他原因的个体心脏组织标本中的表达水平。与对照组织相比，双特异性磷酸酶1（DUSP1）和钾电压门控通道亚家族J成员2（KCNJ2）在机械性窒息组的人体心脏组织中的表达上调，无论年龄、环境温度和死后间隔（PMI）如何，这表明DUSP1和KCNJ2可能与机械性窒息导致的死亡有关，因此可以作为机械性窒息死亡的有用生物标志物。
