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Applicable Forensic Biomarker for Drowning Diagnosis: Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase 2 (ERK2)

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Abstract

Drowning is a common cause of accidental death worldwide, and it continues to be a serious public health problem. However, diagnosing drowning is a challenging task in forensic investigation because it is difficult to prove actual drowning and other submerged deaths with the autopsy techniques that are currently in use. Here, we show biomarkers that may be helpful for the diagnosis of drowning. We divided the experimental animals into four groups (drowning, postmortem submersion, hypoxia, and control) to evaluate the expression patterns of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2). On gene expression analysis, only ERK2 was found to be significantly increased in the drowning groups compared to the other cases. In the immunoblot analysis, phosphorylated ERK2 (p-ERK2) was found to be upregulated in the drowning groups. Immunohistochemical staining also showed that p-ERK in alveolar cells revealed a granular pattern in the drowning groups. However, the expression pattern of ERK2 over time after drowning differed between the freshwater and seawater drowning groups. Taken together, these results indicate that ERK2 may be useful for distinguishing between drowning and postmortem submersion if the postmortem interval (PMI) of drowning is short. Conversely, if the PMI is long from the time that death occurs until the discovery of dead bodies, it is possibly more helpful for identifying between freshwater and seawater drowning.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Soonchunhyang University Research Fund and a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) [NRF-2023R1A2C1003486].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Sciences, Graduate School, Soonchunhyang University, Asan, Chungnam, 31538, Republic of Korea

    Min-Jeong Kim & Yong-Bin Eom

  2. Department of Biomedical Laboratory Science, College of Medical Sciences, Soonchunhyang University, Asan, Chungnam, 31538, Republic of Korea

    Yong-Bin Eom

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  1. Min-Jeong Kim
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Min-Jeong Kim and Yong-Bin Eom. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Min-Jeong Kim and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yong-Bin Eom.

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The study was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Soonchunhyang University (IACUC approval number: SCH17-0003).

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Figure 1

Relative expression analysis of AQP5 in 2 h drowning cases (a) and 48 h drowning cases (b) using quantitative real-time PCR. The mean was normalized to the GAPDH reference and expressed as a ratio. Control (CON), freshwater drowning (FD), and seawater drowning (SD). ***p < 0.001 vs. CON. #p < 0.001 vs. SD (PNG 106 kb)

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Kim, MJ., Eom, YB. Applicable Forensic Biomarker for Drowning Diagnosis: Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase 2 (ERK2). Int J Legal Med 137, 1245–1252 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-023-02992-5

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