Department of Anthropology, Comenius University Bratislava, Ilkovičova 3278/6, 841 04, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Anthropol Anz. 2024 Jan 25;81(1):43-50. doi: 10.1127/anthranz/2023/1721.
The citrate levels in the bone start to decrease after death. Therefore, it may be possible to estimate the post-mortem interval if the citrate content decreases at regular and predictable intervals. To verify this, it was used twelve fresh porcine tibiae and femora, fifteen recently buried porcine bones, two samples of human bones curated from the anatomical teaching collection from Bournemouth University, UK (never been buried) and fifteen samples of archaeological human bones from Saint Augustine the Less, Bristol, UK. The results obtained in this study align together with the data available in the literature, with higher citrate content in the fresh porcine bones and lower in the archaeological samples, however, a statistical significance was not found. Moreover, the formula used to estimate the time since death largely overestimated the known PMI. Further research should be done with a larger sample and a new formula to estimate the post-mortem interval is required.
骨中的柠檬酸盐水平在死亡后开始下降。因此，如果柠檬酸盐含量以规则且可预测的间隔降低，则有可能估算死后间隔时间。为了验证这一点，使用了十二根新鲜的猪胫骨和股骨，十五根最近埋葬的猪骨，两根来自英国伯恩茅斯大学解剖学教学收藏的人类骨骼样本（从未被埋葬）和十五根来自英国布里斯托尔的圣奥古斯丁小教堂的考古人类骨骼样本。本研究的结果与文献中的数据一致，新鲜猪骨中的柠檬酸盐含量较高，而考古样本中的含量较低，但未发现统计学意义。此外，用于估计死亡时间的公式大大高估了已知的 PMI。应该用更大的样本进行进一步的研究，并且需要一个新的公式来估计死后间隔时间。
