Structural and Biochemical Changes of Intercostal Muscles Tissue and their Role in Forensic Medical Diagnostics of Prescription of Death

The development of technologies in the field of modern forensic medical diagnostics, pathomorphology, biochemistry and medicine encourages scientists to develop informative post-mortem criteria for determining the prescription of death and to address the urgent issues of the practical work of forensic experts. However, the overwhelming majority of the proposed modern methods of research cause complications of their implementation in daily practice, most often due to problems of material and technical provision of forensic medical examinations. The purpose of the work was to study the structural and biochemical changes of the tissue of the intercostal muscles in the early post-mortem period. Material and methods. The muscle tissue of intercostal muscles was investigated in the early post-mortem period (3-13 hours) after death in 30 human corpses. Results and discussion. According to the study results of the intercostal muscle tissue in the early post-mortem period (3-13 hours), 30 body organs received absolute and relative indices of glycogen content, acid phosphatase, lactate, lactate dehydrogenase, lipofuscin and cholinesterase. The study proved that in the early postmortem period there occurred biochemical and biophysical changes in muscle tissue. The most indicative of them are: reduction of glycogen content and increase in the content of lactate dehydrogenase, as well as lipofuscinum. For all six biochemical markers, we obtained representative absolute and relative indices of their postmortem content in muscle tissue of the intercostal muscles depending on the prescription of death. We also found out that the level of glycogen content in the analyzed time intervals varied from (7.821 ± 0.0649) mg / g 3 hours after the death to (3.204 ± 0.030) mg / g in 13 hours, significantly (p <0,001) differing every 2 hours postmortem period. We observed significant dynamics in the content of lactate, which was characterized by progressive (p <0.01) increase to 9 hours from the moment of death (from (6.847 ± 0.042) mmol / g 3 hours to (12.960 ± 0.085) mmol / g for 9 hours). The level of lipofuscin content in the analyzed time intervals also increased progressively: from (2.258 ± 0.031) units / g after 3 hours to (5.589 ± 0.030) units / g after 13 hours, significantly (p <0.001) differing every 2 hours postmortem period. Conclusions. In the system interconnection, the pair correlation indices between biochemical and biophysical markers of the state of the intercostal muscles tissue were studied and the corresponding coefficients of system formation were determined in six time intervals of the early postmortem period, which in turn allowed to substantiate the significant criterion in order to improve the accuracy of the diagnosis of the death prescription.