Investigation of the use of seratec pmb test on postmortem peripheral blood samples for forensic purposes

Abstract

The identification of the origin of biological stains at the crime scene is one of the important components of forensic science. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the specificity performance of Seratec-PMB Test, which is used to differentiate menstrual blood from peripheral blood, on blood samples collected from dead bodies. Moreover, our purpose is to investigate the relationship between D-dimer accumulation in postmortem blood and other factors using this method. In this study, Seratec-PMB test is applied to peripheral blood samples of 200 dead bodies and the test results were compared in terms of parameters including age, gender, time between being found dead and sample collection, the cause of death. In Seratec-PMB Test, 71% of postmortem blood samples were positive and 29% were negative for D-dimer presence. A significant relationship was reported in the distribution of test results by age. SERATEC®-PMB test afforded a high rate of positive results in postmortem peripheral blood. It should be remembered that the test may give false positive results for postmortem peripheral blood. Since the test is a semi-quantitative test, it was understood that it would not allow any interpretation about the cause of death. [Med-Science 2022; 11(1.000): 159-65]

Keywords

• d-dimer
• immunochromatographic assay
• menstrual blood
• peripheral blood