Comparison of cations (magnesium and calcium) concentration in caprine and porcine vitreous humour at post mortem intervals

Abstract

Postmortem interval (PMI) is the time elapsed between death of a person and the time of autopsy. Chemical changes occur immediately or later after death, these changes occur in various body fluids including the vitreous humour of the eye. The Vitreous humor contains various measurable electrolytes and other entities and several studies have tried to establish the concentration of these electrolytes in the vitreous humour and the potential utility of these electrolytes in estimating the time of death. The purpose of this study was to determine, establish and compare the caprine and porcine vitreous humour concentration of magnesium and calcium at various post mortem intervals (0, 24, 48, 72hours). This research is a laboratory-based experimental study. 20 pairs of health caprine and porcine eyes each were gotten from freshly slaughtered pigs and goats from the abattoir at Aduwawa, Benin city, Edo State. Thereafter, the vitreous humor was carefully aspirated from the enucleated eyes and kept in sterile tubes and biochemically analyzed at different intervals (0hour, 24hours, 48hours and 72hours) respectively. The data obtained from the experiment was analyzed using One Way Analysis of Variance and Spearman Correlation as processed by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0. The results showed a significant difference (P<0.05) in the concentration of these cations between porcine and caprine vitreous humour at post mortem intervals. In conclusion, post mortem changes result in change in the vitreous concentration of magnesium and calcium in both porcine and caprine animals with the concentrations varying with increasing post mortem interval.

Keywords: Post mortem interval, vitreous humor, magnesium, calcium, caprine and porcine