Challenges in forensic toxicology of skeletonised human remains

Abstract

Forensic toxicologists typically work with body fluids such as blood or urine, as well as visceral tissues such as liver. Very little work has been done to properly understand the utility of drug concentrations in bone tissue in a toxicologic examination. Literature reports suggest that detection of selected drugs in bone tissues is possible, but challenging work remains to determine the implications of bone tissue drug concentration measurements with respect to timelines of drug ingestion and deposition into bone, tissue sampling and sensitivity requirements, and environmental effects on measurements and their interpretation.