Animals ; Hydroxy Acids ; toxicity ; Lacquer ; toxicity ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred ICR ; Superoxide Dismutase ; metabolism

OBJECTIVE: FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) spectroscopy was applied to observe the process of postmortem degradation in rats' cardiac muscle and provided a new method for the estimation of post-mortem interval (PMI). METHODS: The rats were sacrificed by cervical dislocation and the bodies were kept in a controlled environmental chamber set at (20 +/- 2) degrees C. The FTIR spectra was applied to measure the changes of different chemical group from rats' left ventricle muscle at the different time point postmortem. RESULTS: There were not obvious changes for the main FTIR absorbance peaks. But the different FTIR absorbance at the wave-number (cm(-1)) indicated the three types: increase, decrease, stable. The various absorbance ratios also demonstrated the similar changes. CONCLUSION FTIR spectroscopy may be potentially used as an effective method for estimating PMI in forensic practice using cardiac muscle tissue.
Animals ; Autopsy ; Fatty Acids/metabolism* ; Forensic Pathology ; Male ; Models, Animal ; Myocardium/metabolism* ; Nucleic Acids/metabolism* ; Postmortem Changes ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared/methods* ; Time Factors