Manuscripts prepared in accordance with Guide for authors should be sent to the editor-in-chief or to one of the national editors. Submission of articles Official journal of the Danish, the Norwegian and the Swedish societies for forensic medicine. The journal will publish original articles, review articles, preliminary communications, letters to the editor and case reports in the different dis...

The increasing role of hair analysis in forensic toxicological investigations principally owes to recent improvements of mass spectrometric instrumentation. Research achievements during the last 6 years in this distinctive application area of analytical toxicology are reviewed. The earlier state of the art of hair analysis was comprehensively covered by a dedicated book (Kintz, 2007a. Analytica...

The word `forensic' simply means `to do with courts of law' and, as far as toxicology and biochemistry laboratories are concerned, embraces everything which has or might have legal implications. Some of the work in which the biochemistry department becomes involved is obviously `forensic' but this may not be apparent at the time of receipt of the request; this is the ®rst pitfall. Toseland high...

Background: Postmortem redistribution (PMR) refers to the changes that may occur in drug concentrations after death. Consequently, postmortem concentrations in blood may not always replicate the antemortem drug levels. Literature supports the model describing drugs with a liver (L) concentration to peripheral blood (P) concentration ratio less than 5 (L/kg) being prone to little or no PMR. Conv...

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry has evolved from a topic of mainly research interest into a routinely usable tool in various application fields. With the advent of new ionization approaches, especially atmospheric pressure, the technique has established itself firmly in many areas of research. Although many applications prove that LC-MS is a valuable complementary analytical tool to GC-...

Since alcohol is a general central nervous system depressant, it affects the motor and cognitive performance. Alcohol abuse is a major cause of medical and social problems. Additionally, to determine cause of death in legal medicine centers, alcohol analysis is the most frequently performed test in forensic toxicology laboratories. Accurate interpretation of ethanol concentration at the time...

The potentials and limitations of high-performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detection are highlighted in respect to its use in the analysis of different biological matrices followed by the identification of unknowns. The logical analytical approach used in clinical and forensic toxicology, vital for the identification of one or more toxic substances as a cause of intoxication, is ...

Toxicology is a multidisciplinary study of poisons, aimed to correlate the quantitative and qualitative relationships between poisons and their physiological and behavioural effects in living systems. Other key aspects of toxicology focus on elucidation of the mechanisms of action of poisons and development of remedies and treatment plans for associated toxic effects. In these endeavours, Mass ...

Immunoassays are useful laboratory methods for clinical and forensic toxicology diagnostics. The methods are fast, sensitive, accurate and let determine poisons concentrations in different kinds of biological fluids. There are blood and urine or alternative: saliva, sweat and hair. The choice of the sample depends on the purpose of analysis. In acute poisoning the blood or serum poison concentr...