Stability of ethanol in postmortem blood and vitreous humor in long-term refrigerated storage

Abstract

Ethanol concentrations in postmortem blood and vitreous humor samples collected at the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Department over 5-6 years ago were reexamined to assess whether vitreous humor is a more reliable specimen for the analysis of ethanol in samples stored long term. The average change in 50-mL polypropylene tubes containing blood was 0.06 gm/dL (35% loss). On the other hand, vitreous humor samples collected in 10-mL gray-top Vacutainer tubes yielded an average change of 0.01 gm/dL (6.1% loss). This study demonstrates that vitreous humor may be a reliable matrix for ethanol analysis following prolonged refrigerated storage of the samples.