The incidence of death by asphyxia is second to the incidence of death by mechanical injury; however, death by mechanical asphyxia may be difficult to prove in court, particularly in cases in which corpses do not exhibit obvious signs of asphyxia. To identify a credible biomarker of asphyxia, we first examined the expression levels of 47,000 mRNAs in human cardiac tissue specimens from individuals who died of mechanical asphyxia and compared the expression levels with the levels of the corresponding mRNAs in specimens from individuals who died of craniocerebral injury using microarray. We selected 119 differentially expressed mRNAs, examined the expression levels of these mRNAs in 44 human cardiac tissue specimens of individuals who died of mechanical asphyxia, craniocerebral injury, hemorrhagic shock, or other causes. That the expression of dual-specificity phosphatase 1 (DUSP1) and potassium voltage-gated channel subfamily J member 2 (KCNJ2) was upregulated in human cardiac tissues from the mechanical asphyxia group compared with control tissues, regardless of age, environmental temperature, and postmortem interval (PMI), indicating that DUSP1 and KCNJ2 may be associated with mechanical asphyxia-induced death and can thus serve as useful biomarkers of death by mechanical asphyxia.
[1]Fudan Univ, Dept Forens Med, Sch Basic Med Sci, 131 Dongan Rd, Shanghai 200032, Peoples R China.
[2]Shenzhen Publ Secur Bur, Shenzhen Insitute Criminal Sci & Technol, Criminal Invest Dept, Shenzhen 518000, Peoples R China.
[3]Shanghai Univ Med & Hlth Sci, 279 ZhouzhuHwy, Shanghai 201318, Peoples R China.
[4]Fudan Univ, Sch Basic Med Sci, Dept Physiol & Pathophysiol, 131 Dongan Rd, Shanghai 200032, Peoples R China.
[5]Shanghai Publ Secur Bur, Criminal Sci & Technol Inst, Forens Lab, 803 North Zhongshan Rd, Shanghai 200082, Peoples R China.
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