Citation

Ohno Y. Forensic Sci. Rev. 2014; 26(2): 139-144.

Affiliation

Department of Legal Medicine, Nippon Medical School, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. ohno@nms.ac.jp.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Central Police University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

26227030

Abstract

Aconite (wolfsbane) plants, which belong to the genus Aconitum (Ranunculaceae family), contain highly toxic alkaloids, including aconitine, mesaconitine, hypaconitine, and jesaconitine, in all of their parts. The relevance of this plant material is illustrated by the case of a Japanese female who died suddenly in 1986 and was autopsied in Okinawa by the author. The detection in 1987 of Aconitum alkaloids in her blood using gas chromatography/selected ion monitoring (GC/SIM), which was newly developed for this case, demonstrated that she had died from aconite poisoning.

Language: en