Organic acids in post-mortem cerebrospinal fluid.

Organic acids of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) have been determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in 29 post-mortem samples obtained from infants and 10 samples obtained from hospitalized children, as controls. Though the organic acids profile was similar in the two groups, eight organic acids not observed in CSF from live infants were inconstantly found in post-mortem CSF and for three of them, malic acid, lactyllactic acid and uracile, concentrations were correlated with the delay in sampling.