Postmortem diagnosis of
cantharidin-induced myocardial injury and postmortem interval estimation (PMI) are the challenges in forensic science. Cardiac
biomarkers play an important role in the prediction and diagnosis of myocardial injury and can be used to determine the PMI. Based on the evidence, we aimed to explore the
biomarkers which may be used for the postmortem diagnosis of
cantharidin-induced myocardial injury and PMI estimation using the study of the
proteins expression of TN-T,
VEGF and HIF-1α by ELISA. Results of this study suggested that postmortem pathological changes were difficult to identify due to the
autolysis of myocardium 72 h after death in
cantharidin poisoning group. The plasma levels of TN-T and HIF-1α/TN-T are cardiac
biomarkers with higher diagnostic accuracy for postmortem diagnosis of
cantharidin-induced myocardial injury,
VEGF/HIF-1α promises to be a
biomarker for PMI estimation. Further studies are needed to verify these
biomarkers, based on population, for being a useful tool in postmortem diagnosis of
cantharidin-induced myocardial injury and PMI estimation.