Medicolegal studies on alcohol detected in dead bodies--alcohol levels in skeletal muscle.

An experiment was carried out on rats to determine whether or not a skeletal muscle sample was suitable for the determination of ethanol concentration in a carcass. Gas chromatography was used to estimate the ethanol and n-propanol concentrations in the femoral muscle and intracardial blood. The ethanol concentration of each sample was corrected according to the moisture ratio of circulating blood, viz., 78.5%. The ethanol concentration ratio of blood to muscle was 1.03 two hours after ethanol administration. When the carcasses of rats pre-treated with ethanol were stored at 15 degrees C and 25 degrees C, respectively, the ethanol concentrations in muscle and blood increased with time. At all times the concentration was higher in blood than in muscle, and also higher in samples collected from the carcass stored at 25 degrees C than at 15 degrees C. When the control carcass was stored in the same manner, the postmortem production of ethanol was noticed in both blood and muscle. As in the experimental rats, the control rats exhibited a higher blood ethanol than muscle ethanol level. Again, the ethanol concentration was higher in samples collected from the carcass stored at 25 degrees C than at 15 degrees C. The ratio of ethanol to n-propanol was less than 20:1 in blood and less than 10:1 in muscle. These results suggest that skeletal muscle may be a suitable tissue for the postmortem detection of ethanol.