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Citation |
Busardò FP, Portelli F, Montana A, Rotolo MC, Pichini S, Maresi E. Leg. Med. (Elsevier) 2017; 26: 92-97. |
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Affiliation |
Department of Sciences for Health Promotion and Mother and Child Care, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2017, Japanese Society of Legal Medicine, Publisher Elsevier Publishing) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
28527983 |
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Abstract |
We here report a case involving a 21-year-old female, found dead in a central square of a city in the south of Italy. Initial evidences and circumstances were suggestive of a death associated with a sexual assault. Two peripheral blood and two vitreous humor samples were collected for the purpose of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) testing from the dead body at two different post-mortem intervals (PMIs): approximately 2 (t0) and 36 (t1) hours. The obtained results showed that, between t0 and t1, there was an increase of GHB concentrations in peripheral blood and vitreous humor of 66.3% and 8.1%, respectively. This case was the first evidence of GHB post mortem production in a dead body and not in vitro, showing that vitreous humor is less affected than peripheral blood in GHB post-mortem production. The value detected at t1 in peripheral blood (53.4µg/mL) exceeded the proposed cut-off and if interpreted alone would have led to erroneous conclusions. This was not the case of vitreous humor GHB, whose post-mortem increase was minimal and it allowed to exclude a GHB exposure. Only after a broad forensic investigation including a complete autopsy, serological, histological, toxicological and haematology analyses, a diagnosis of idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome, a myeloproliferative disorder characterized by persistent eosinophilia associated with damage to multiple organs, was made and the cause of death was due to a pulmonary eosinophilic vasculitis responsible for an acute respiratory failure. Language: en |
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Keywords |
Drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA); Forensic investigation; GHB; Hypereosinophilic syndrome; Vitreous humor |