Novel approach to determine post-mortem interval from ATPase activity

A recurring problem in forensic medicine is the need to fix the time of death within the limits of probability. Errors in overestimating and underestimating the post-mortem interval based on body cooling is common. Post-mortem biochemistry has become a potent additional procedure in forensic death investigation. However, in our experiment, to determine the post-mortem interval we investigated the ATPase activity. The investigation was performed on the liver tissue of 25 corpses (21 men and four women) of age ranging between 40-60years. The study of ATPase enzymatic activity shows that there is a considerable drop in the levels of ATPase activity with increasing post-mortem interval up to 24h and this is one of the most reliable methods for estimating time of death.