Quantitative determination of carbon monoxide in cell culture supernatants by spectrophotometric analysis.

A simple, sensitive, nonradioactive method for measuring carbon monoxide (CO) in cell culture supernatant is described. Dissolved CO reacts with hemoglobin (Hb) to carboxyhemoglobin (HbCO) in a modified Conway cell. HbCO is quantified by spectrophotometric analysis, and total concentration of CO given in microg CO/l cell culture supernatant is mathematically calculated. Furthermore, we compared our newly developed method with a recently published method. Confluent human umbilical vein epithelial cells (HUVEC) were incubated with 10(-6) M hydrocortisone known to induce heme oxygenase-2 protein and transcript expression for 4 h and CO production was measured. Levels following hydrocortisone treatment were significantly enhanced compared to controls when using our newly developed technique (p<0.05), whereas only a nonsignificant trend could be observed using the recently published method. We conclude that this nonradioactive technique to quantify CO is more sensitive than previous ones, thereby allowing to measure even physiologic quantities of CO in aqueous solutions.

Discovery of decomposed and mummified corpses in the domestic setting--a marker of social isolation?

Mass media reports attribute the occurrence of decomposed or mummified corpses in a domestic setting mainly to an increasing social isolation of elderly people. Not much is known about the demographic and medical conditions under which individuals are found months or even years after death in their homes. For this study, autopsy reports of individuals found dead and mummified or decomposed between 1993 and 1997 with those from 1963 to 1967 were retrospectively analyzed. Between 1993 and 1997, a total number of 320 individuals were found decomposed at home compared to 412 such cases between 1963 and 1967. The proportion of individuals older than 64 years was significantly higher during the 1990s study period. Furthermore, the proportion of deaths attributable to natural causes was significantly lower during the 1990s, whereas the rate of suicides was nearly three times higher.

Murder by poisoning: successful analytical investigations of spectacular cases in Austria.

To prove murder by poisoning requires the application of analytical toxicology to detect the fatal substance and clear up the cause of death. Improvements in the development of mass spectrometry in combination with high-resolution chromatographic methods are steadily enhancing detection and identification power but making use of these advances relies on proper sample preparation as well as on knowledge about the chemical nature of the substances and their bio-transformation products. This review gives examples of case reports with successful analytical investigations of murder by poisoning in spectacular Austrian cases involving low molecular weight.