Myoglobinemia markers with potential applications in forensic sample analysis: lipid markers in myoglobinemia for postmortem blood

The crush syndrome, in which rhabdomyolysisand trauma occur as a result of heat stroke and drug intoxication, can lead to myoglobinemia. This condition can be diagnosed by measuring myoglobin(Mb) levels in blood and urine. However, postmortem Mb levels are unreliable indicators, since blood Mb concentration drastically increases within a very short time after death and urine cannot always be obtained at dissection; this makes it difficult to diagnose myoglobinemiain a corpse. To address this issue, in this study, we used a lipidomicsapproach to identify markers that can be used to detect myoglobinemiain postmortem blood samples. We found that increases in levels of fatty acid oxides such as stearic, oleic, linoleic, and arachidonic acid and decreases in levels of plasmalogensand phosphatidylethanolaminein the blood were associated with high Mb level. These results demonstrate that postmortem samples are amenable to lipidomicsanalysis and provide a set of markers other than Mb that can be used for postmortem diagnosis of myoglobinemia.