Anette Mariane Daa Funder's research while affiliated with Aarhus University and other places

Variability in expression and activity of hepatic drug-metabolizing cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes can play a causal role in fatal intoxication cases and is thus of forensic interest. We investigated the feasibility of LC-MS/MS based quantification and in vitro enzyme activity measurements of two major drug-metabolizing enzymes CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 in postmortem human liver microsomes (HLM). In autopsy cases (postmortem interval 24–36 h) we found CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 protein levels similar to that measured in a non-decayed reference HLM pool, whereas CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 enzyme activities were absent or severely decreased. Stability studies showed that CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 protein abundances were relatively stable in tissue stored in vitro for up to seven days at 4 °C. When tissue was stored for more than one day at 21 °C variable and case-specific decay patterns were observed, and CYP abundances declined especially after 3–4 days storage. Investigations of 50 autopsy cases revealed mean CYP1A2 and CYP3A4 levels of 49 and 47 pmol per mg HLM protein and inter-individual variabilities similar to those reported in other studies. This study supports postmortem quantification of CYP proteins in autopsy hepatic tissue by mass spectrometry. Significance This study indicates that MS-based detection of drug-metabolizing cytochrome P450 (CYP) proteins is achievable in postmortem hepatic tissue and that acceptable quantification data are obtainable but dependent on the storage conditions and postmortem sampling time. CYP abundance data could contribute to a conceivable way of assessing individual CYP activity phenotypes in a postmortem context.

The breakdown of DNA and RNA in decomposing human tissue represents a major obstacle for postmortem forensic molecular analysis. This study investigated the feasibility of performing PCR-based molecular analysis of blood and muscle tissue from 45 autopsy cases with defined postmortem intervals ranging from one to more than 14 days. It was not possible to collect blood from 38 % of the autopsy cases due to severe coagulation and hemolysis, whereas muscle tissue was available for all cases. PCR-amplifiable DNA could be extracted from 96 % of the frozen muscle specimens and from 93 % of the formalin fixed and paraffin embedded (FFPE) muscle specimens. A quality assessment of muscle-derived DNA showed increased fragmentation with advancing body decomposition and generally more fragmentation in DNA from FFPE tissue than in DNA from frozen tissue. It was possible to amplify 1,000 basepair (bp) DNA fragments from all samples with postmortem intervals below 3 days whereas 400-600 bp long fragments typically could be amplified from the most decomposed muscle specimens. RNA was less stable than DNA in postmortem muscle tissue, yet selected mRNA molecules could be detected by reverse-transcriptase PCR in all samples up to 3 days after death. We conclude that analysis of DNA from bodies with a wide postmortem interval range is usually possible whereas the consistency of RNA analyses decreases considerably 3 days postmortem. We showed that muscle tissue is a highly usable source of DNA and RNA for postmortem forensic molecular analysis as well as for retrospective research projects based on archived FFPE specimens.