95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mol. Biosci.
Sec. Metabolomics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2025.1563642
Metabolomic Analysis of Fatal Hypothermia Using Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
Provisionally accepted
Jia-Hao Li 1 Jia-Li Liu 1 Jian-Wen Song 2,3 Wei-Liang Deng 1 Xin-Zhi Cao 1 Zhong-Wen Wu 1 Ding-Hao Chen 1 Hui Wang 4 Song Yu 2
Qi Wang 1*- 1 Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
- 2 Guangdong Provincial Forensic Science of Evidence Materials (Nantian) Engineering Technology Research Center, Shenzhen, China
- 3 Guangdong Justice Police Vocational College, Guangzhou, China
- 4 Department of Pediatric Surgery, Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, Guangzhou, China
The identification of fatal hypothermia remains a significant challenge in forensic medicine. Metabolomics, which reflects the overall changes in endogenous metabolites within an organism, holds substantial value in the exploration of disease mechanisms and the screening of molecular markers.Methods: Using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS), we conducted a metabolomic analysis of serum, heart, lung, and kidney tissues from mice with fatal hypothermia.Results: A total of 67 metabolites significantly differed across all the tissues, involving pathways such as the TCA cycle, fatty acid oxidation, arginine metabolism, histamine metabolism, and antioxidant-related pathways. Each tissue also displayed unique metabolic alterations. Additionally, we observed significant differences in the metabolomic profiles of kidney tissues from mice with different survival times.Our findings contribute to elucidate the underlying mechanisms involved and provide a foundation for the forensic identification of markers of fatal hypothermia.
Keywords: Fatal hypothermia, metabolomic, UHPLC-MS, IDENTIFICATION, Forensic Medicine
Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 02 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Liu, Song, Deng, Cao, Wu, Chen, Wang, Yu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Qi Wang, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.