Metabolomic profiling in asphyxia: a promising tool

Mechanical asphyxia (MA) is one of the causes of deaths that ultimately brings to cardiac arrest (CA), with high occurrence and dead rates (Zhang et al., 2021). Up to date, the diagnosis of an asphyxiated death is still based on cross comparisons between histological examinations and other circumstances, but the findings might be non-specific or, in some cases, totally absent. Moreover, the discrimination between a primitive CA or a CA after asphyxiation depends on factors that lack objective evidence (Locci et al., 2021). Considering that biochemical pathway alterations occur in a hypoxic environment, metabolomics, the latest “omic” technology, has caught attention to improve our understanding of asphyxia (Fattuoni et al., 2015) by detecting potential and useful biomarkers for asphyxiated bodies.