Postmortem determination of HbA1c and glycated albumin concentrations using the UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS method for the purposes of medicolegal opinions

Publication date: June 2020Source: Microchemical Journal, Volume 155Author(s): Karolina Nowak, Marcin Zawadzki, Tomasz JurekAbstractPostmortem diagnosis of hyperglycaemia is a challenge in forensic medicine. Glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) is considered one of the markers providing an alternative to postmortem determinations of glucose concentration. On the other hand, glycated albumin (GA) may be determined in cases of difficulty in determining HbA1c.The aim of this study was to implement and evaluate the usefulness of methods enabling determination of HbA1c an GA in postmortem material (HbA1c–peripheral blood, GA–serum, urine, vitreous humour) using the UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS. The material consisted of samples collected during autopsy. The study group consisted of 50 people with antemortem diagnosis of diabetes. The control group consisted of 50 people who died a sudden death, with negative test results for the presence of ethanol, without suspected carbohydrate metabolism disorders, and not resuscitated before death. Statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software package. We failed to implement a method for determining the concentration of glycated albumin, but we successfully modified the method for determining HbA1c using the UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS. We have proven that our method is useful in determination of HbA1c in postmortem blood by forensic laboratories and we are convinced that it could be implemented by clinical laboratories. The demonstrated dif...
Source: Microchemical Journal - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research