Discrimination between postmortem and antemortem blood by a dot-ELISA for human myoglobin.

A method for discriminating between postmortem and antemortem blood from bloodstains by detection of human myoglobin using a dot-ELISA was devised, and its applicability to forensic practice was investigated. This method exploits the high amount of myoglobin present in postmortem blood in comparison with that in antemortem blood. Our dot-ELISA was able to detect human myoglobin from bloodstains containing more than 10 micrograms/ml myoglobin, the level commonly observed in postmortem blood. Using this method, 10 stains of postmortem blood and 10 of antemortem blood were all identified correctly. A one-year-old stain made of postmortem blood and a stain of bloody fluid obtained from a severely putrefied body 4 months after death were identified as postmortem blood by this method. Two practical cases for which this method was applied are presented.