Earticle

Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug belonging to the benzothiazepine derivatives. We present a case in which suicidal overdose deaths were associated with quetiapine. The dead woman was found on her bed. She had got psychotherapy. Blood specimens and gastric contents were initially subjected to a thorough qualitative analysis. Quetiapine and lorazepam were detected in biological specimens by solid phase extraction and separated by LC/MS/MS. The concentrations of quetiapine and lorazepam were 7.42 mg/L and 0.23 mg/L in heart blood, and 839 g/kg and 0.062 g/kg in gastric contents, respectively. The concentrations of quetiapine in these cases are 7 times greater than the upper reported therapeutic range (0.1 - 1.0 mg/L). The cause of death was considered to be a quetiapine overdose and the other drugs were not considered to be contributory.

The oleanders are evergreen flowering shrubs that grow well in warm subtropical regions. The oleanders contain numerous toxic cardiac glycosides, including oleandrin, digitoxigenin and folineriin which are present in all parts of the plant. The most significant of these toxins is oleandrin. This study presents a case of fatal poisoning with oleander leaves in an adult male. A 50-year-old man was found dead, and suspected to ingest oleander leaves. Blood sample was collected and analyzed by LC/MS/MS. The oleandrin was detected in blood specimen. Calibration curves exhibited correlation coefficients >0.9988 in the concentration range of 5-50 ng/mL, and oleandrin concentration in blood was 22 ng/mL. The cause of death for this case was determined to be acute oleandrin intoxication.

Murder is a very serious social issue. When a murder occurs, the investigation process is closely linked to the DNA laboratory proceeds of National Forensic Service. In particular, the DNA profile of the suspect obtained from crime scene provide important clues to solve the murder case. The created DNA profile is then archived into the national DNA database. However, the current national DNA database, there is a difficulty to solve the murder case, due to the limitations of the small scale and the searching condition. We report how the further DNA analysis and rapid application play an important role in the murder case.

The fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) as a preliminary test sometimes gives false positive results due to structural similarity between amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). Thus, a rapid and easy HS (headspace)-SPME (solid-phase microextraction)-GC (gas chromatography)-MS (mass spectrometry) screening method was developed and validated for simultaneous detection of 8 ATS in human urine. These drugs include methamphetamine, amphetamine, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) and MDA (3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine) which are popular abused drugs and their metabolites in Korea. Phentermine, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and norephedrine/norpseudoephedrine also show cross- reactivity by FPIA. The conditions of SPME extraction time, temperature and deposition time were optimized to yield the highest peak area. To prevent carryover, the fiber was baked out pre and post injection into GC/MS. The data was collected by extracted ion chromatogram for each drug from total ion chromatograms by full scan mode and calculated by peak area ratios. Amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA, MDMA and phentermine showed good resolution with retention times, whereas ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and norephedrine/norpesudo-ephedrine were not detected up to 1 μg/mL. The calibration curve showed acceptable linearity for each drug with R2> 0.99. The results of the intra-and inter-day precision and accuracy were satisfactory: <15 % for precision and within ±10 % for accuracy at three different concentrations (0.167, 0.333, 1.00 μg/mL). Thus, HS-SPME-GC-MS has the advantages of an easy sample preparation with acceptable accuracy and precision for the simultaneous quantification. It will be a useful method for a simple and rapid screening analysis of urines for ATS abuse.

It is significant to have an analytical result that can identify someone irrelevant or a relevant suspect to an incident exactly from the bloody fingerprints when the bloody fingerprints found in a murder scene are classified into the state of bloody fingerprints as they are overlapped with normal fingerprints classified prior to the incident due to the accidental contact with the blood of the attacker and the victim of the crime. This study, accordingly, examined experimentally if normal fingerprints can be insufflated as bloody fingerprints by something like blood-stained gloves after they are classified to be normal fingerprints in order to be used for a solution of an actual case, and if they are insufflated, if the ridge and furrow on the bloody fingerprints are as same as those of the original fingerprints including a change in the bloody fingerprints over time that hasn°Øt been carried out yet as well as the type of gloves and the characteristics of the surface condition of the object from which the fingerprints are found.

DNA analysis results from body fluid remaining at the crime scenes has adopted by the important evidences for solving criminal cases. Recently, plant material evidences has become increasingly important for solving criminal cases. In this study, we has established the optimized method for plant DNA analysis to aid in forensic cases. We used MagNA Lyser that disrupt samples and select psbA-trnH spacer region to discriminate plant species. Among Taq polymerase, BD Advantage 2 polymerase mix and i-TaqTM plus DNA polymerase showed successful results in DNA amplification efficiency at 1.0 ng/uL of DNA template, however TaKaRa Taq polymerase and AmpliTaq Gold polymerase showed no PCR products. Especially BD Advantage 2 polymerase mix showed successful results in DNA amplification and sequencing below 0.01 ng/uL DNA template concentration. However it was necessary to use more than two loci region in plastid genomes for further evaluation to increase discrimination power.

Heavy industry has played pivotal role for the industry development in Korea forthe last half century and the facility requires periodic maintenance to keep consistency and stability because of harsh operating condition. However this might be carried out under oxygen depleted confined space. During the overhaul, suffocate might happen and the cause should be examined whether hypoxia is really involved. It is reported that hypoxia deaminates cytosine in DNA to uracil and then the DNA recovery system is known to be initiated. In this study, to get the information of uracil in the blood, SD (sprauge dawley) rats were exposed to the oxygen depleted confined space filled with nitrogen gas and then the blood was sampled followed by analyzed with GC-MS (gas chromatography-massspectrometry) through solvent extraction and silylation via standard addition method. The detection limit of the method for uracil was 0.01 μg/mL in water and the linearity of r2 showed better than 0.95. For all of the 7 blood samples, the concentration of uracil was from the value of less than 1.3 μg/mL for normal blood and 3.7 μg/mL through 10.1 μg/mL for the blood exposed to hypoxia condition. The concentration of uracil was found to be increased by about 9.6 times on average for 7 pairs. Additionally for the 3 cases of death assumed to be due to hypoxia in the confined space, the concentration of uracil was 21.8 μg/mL, 16.5 μg/mL and 10.0 μg/mL respectively. More sophisticated experiment should be required to confirm uracil to be used as a marker for the case of death in the oxygen depleted space because other variable could affect the concentration of uracil.

Bloodstain pattern analysis, a field of forensic science, is used to reconstruct a crime scene by analyzing the physical properties of bloodstains, such as their size, shape, and distribution. It not only enables reconstruction of homicide crime scenes that involve bloodstain patterns, but also determines the credibility of testimonials, roles in the crime, and the criminal process. Impact spatter, the most common spatter type in crime scenes with blood evidence, can be analyzed to derive the information necessary to reconstruct criminal behavior during the commission of the crime. However, existing methods of bloodstain pattern analysis do not take into consideration the environmental factors or physical properties of bloodstains, thus resulting in severely erroneous results if the error rate surpasses a certain threshold. This study examined the influence of the temperature and humidity conditions of the crime scene on the determination of the angle of impact and the area of origin. Drop tests and impact spatter tests were conducted while varying the temperature and humidity. The results showed no distinguishable error in relation to temperature or humidity, indicating that the determination of the angle of impact and area of origin are notsignificantly affected by temperature or humidity conditions.

In case of familial searching with large database, common STRs cannot provide sufficient kinship index. Thus, new STR kits with additional STR loci are necessary in order to complement conventional analysis for more reliable forensic information. In this study, the PowerPlex Fusion System (Promega, Madison, WI, USA), the GlobalFiler PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA), and the PowerPlex Y23 System (Promega) were tested for internal validation. Validations of these new STR kits include all of the studies required by SWGDAM and compared with three conventional kits of Identifiler Plus (Applied Biosystems), NGMSElect (Applied Biosystems) and Yfiler (Applied Biosystems), and tests were performed by using Tecan Freedom Evo automated liquid handling system (Tecan, Mannedorf, Switzerland). Studies included reproducibility, precision, sensitivity of detection, minimum detection threshold, system contamination, stochastic effect and concordance. These forensic parameters were used to assess suitability of the new kits for forensic genetic analysis. Validation studies demonstrate that new STR kits are robust, reliable, and sensitive methods for STR testing. Furthermore, concordance studies showed consistent results when comparing PowerPlex Fusion, GlobalFiler and PowerPlex Y23 System with other commercially available STR-genotyping systems and these new STR kits showed remarkable allele call rates in 60 years old skeletal samples. These results indicated that new STR systems are potentially informative and may prove useful in identification of missing casualties from the Korean War.

Since the Y chromosome is inherited largely as a single non-recombining molecule it is necessary to accurately confirm the variable phenomenon of Y chromosome STR haplotypes in large population data. When the multiple Y chromosome STRs are used as large-scale in forensic cases, it can be frequently observed such as atypical alleles, containing microvariant, null and duplicated alleles in haplotypes. During the analysis of 17 Y-STR haplotypes using the AmpF/STR Yfiler system for forensic application, we have found a number of the atypical allele events (100 haplotypes out of 4138 subjects) at Y chromosome STR loci. Therefore, we need to report on the phenomenon of these alleles that is often observed in Koreans.