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Determination of urinary catecholamines and metanephrines in cardiac deaths

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to measure catecholamines and their O-methylated metabolites in urine and vitreous humor collected in cardiac deaths and noncardiac control cases that underwent medicolegal investigations. Our first goal was to assess whether cardiac events of different types are characterized by different catecholamine/metanephrine urine and/or vitreous profiles. Our second goal was to determine whether noncardiac causes of death with different survival intervals are characterized by different catecholamine/metanephrine urine and/or vitreous profiles. Two study groups were prospectively and retrospectively formed, a cardiac death group (including three subgroups, according to the cause of death) and a noncardiac death group (including two subgroups, according to the length of the agonal period). Postmortem angiography, autopsy, histology, toxicology, and biochemistry were performed in all cases. First results seem to indicate that absolute values measured in urine and vitreous for each of the analyzed markers display no significant differences relating to each of the tested cardiac death subgroups. In the control group, absolute concentrations measured in urine and vitreous for each of the analyzed parameters failed to show significant differences relating to the length of agonal period. Our preliminary findings do not seem to confirm the conclusions of former studies and fail to corroborate the usefulness of urine catecholamine and metanephrine analysis to characterize stress response intensity or length of the dying process in the postmortem setting.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Centre of Legal Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital, Chemin de la Vulliette 4, 1000,, Lausanne 25, Switzerland

    Tania Hervet, Silke Grabherr, Patrice Mangin & Cristian Palmiere

  2. Service de Biomédecine, Lausanne University Hospital, 1011,, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Eric Grouzmann

Authors
  1. Tania Hervet
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  2. Eric Grouzmann
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  3. Silke Grabherr
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  4. Patrice Mangin
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  5. Cristian Palmiere
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Correspondence to Cristian Palmiere.

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The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Ethics approval

All relevant ethical issues were identified and discussed with the local ethical committee. No ethical approval was necessary to perform biochemical analyses in the collected cases.

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Hervet, T., Grouzmann, E., Grabherr, S. et al. Determination of urinary catecholamines and metanephrines in cardiac deaths. Int J Legal Med 130, 995–1001 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-015-1303-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-015-1303-2

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