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Applications of Metabolomics in Forensic Toxicology and Forensic Medicine …
Applications of Metabolomics in Forensic Toxicology and Forensic Medicine
What is Metabolomics?
Study of small-molecule metabolites
Ex: blood, urine, hair, tissue
Focuses on phenotypes more than genomics or preteomics
Looks at direct changes in the body
Uses two approaches: Untargeted (global, captures many metabolites) and targeted (specific, mainly used for confirmation)
Platforms used
NMR, MS-based (LC-MS, GC-MS, CE-MS)
How can this study be used in forensic medicine
Opens possibility to identifying novel markers to indicate drug abuse
Possibly provide fast response to suspected NPS consumption and diagnose overdose
Can detect new drug metabolites in human specimens
Possible detect and diagnosis of poisoning
Can detect metabolities of performance-enhancing drugs
Estimate time of death or PMI, through metabolite degradation patterns that occur after death
Can be used to determine cause of death by looking at metabolic signatures through altered metabolic pathways
Can discover biomarker panels to reveal underlying pathology
Why use metabolomics over other omics?
Has high sensitivity to be able to detect even low levels of drugs and metabolic changes
With high sensitivity, subtle changes can be detected
Can reveal how drugs and toxins alter metabolism
Can be used on a wide variety of samples like blood, urine, hair, tissues, body fluids, etc
Limitation
There is a huge lack of samples taken to research topic
No protocol for how these samples should be collected for research purposes
Large datasets can be difficult to refine and would need to use other tools to analyze the dataset
In cases of samples that are degraded the results are limited
Autolysis, bacterial activity, and enzymatic breakdown can change metabolism. More information on the result of these changes to apply to the analysis