The impact of gender, age and tissues in vitro on estimating postmortem interval by FTIR spectroscopy

To investigate the influence of such individual factors as gender, age and tissues in vitro to the postmortem interval (PMI) by the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer in animal experiments. SD rats were classified into male and female groups, different age groups (21-day, 42-day and 63-day group), and tissues in vitro and in vivo groups. The rats were sacrificed by cervical dislocation, whose bodies were kept in a controlled environmental chamber set at (20+/-2) degrees C and 50% humidity. The liver, kidney, spleen, myocardium, brain, lung and skeletal muscle tissues were collected for measurement from time zero to 48 h postmortem. With the change of PMI, no obvious changes were found in the main FTIR absorbance peaks and their ratios at different time points. All the experimental groups showed no significant changes when compared with the controls. The gender, age and tissues in vitro were not found to be contributing factors in the estimation of PMI via FTIR spectroscopy.