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. 2025 Jun 28;14(7):784.
doi: 10.3390/biology14070784.

Dead or Alive? Identification of Postmortem Blood Through Detection of D-Dimer

Amy N Brodeur  1 , Tai-Hua Tsai  1 , Gulnaz T Javan  2 , Dakota Bell  3 , Christian Stadler  4 , Gabriela Roca  4 , Sara C Zapico  5   6
Affiliations

Dead or Alive? Identification of Postmortem Blood Through Detection of D-Dimer

Amy N Brodeur et al. Biology (Basel). .

Abstract

At crime scenes, apart from the detection of blood, it may be important to determine whether a person was alive at the time of blood deposition. Based on the rapid onset of fibrinolysis after death, this pathway could be considered to identify potential biomarkers for postmortem blood. Fibrinolysis is the natural process that breaks down blood clots after healing a vascular injury. One of its products, D-dimer, could be a potential biomarker for postmortem blood. SERATEC® (SERATEC® GmbH, Göttingen, Germany) has developed the PMB immunochromatographic assay to simultaneously detect human hemoglobin and D-dimer. The main goals of this study were to assess the possibility of using this test to detect postmortem blood, evaluate D-dimer levels in antemortem, menstrual, and postmortem blood, and assess the ability to obtain STR profiles from postmortem blood. Except for one degraded sample, all postmortem blood samples reacted positively for the presence of D-dimer using the SERATEC® PMB test. All antemortem blood samples from living individuals showed negative results for D-dimer detection, except for one liquid sample with a weak positive result, probably due to pre-existing health conditions. Menstrual blood samples gave variable results for D-dimer. The DIMERTEST® Latex assay was used for semi-quantitative measurement of D-dimer concentrations, with postmortem and menstrual blood yielding higher D-dimer concentrations compared to antemortem blood. Full STR profiles were developed for all postmortem samples tested except for one degraded sample, pointing to the possibility of not only detecting postmortem blood at the crime scene but also the potential identification of the victim.

Keywords: D-dimer; DNA profile; immunochromatographic test; menstrual blood; postmortem blood.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors Christian Stadler and Gabriela Roca are employed by the company SERATEC®. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Approximate D-dimer concentration and estimated PMIs of the postmortem blood samples. The average D-dimer concentration in ten postmortem blood samples and corresponding postmortem interval is displayed.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Sample counts of each blood type according to the approximate concentration of D-dimer. The antemortem, postmortem, and menstrual blood sample counts are shown based on the approximate ranges of D-dimer levels detected using the DIMERTEST® Latex assay.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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