Volume: 56 Issue: 2
Year: 2025, Page: 236-239, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2025.56.2.236-239
Received: Sept. 30, 2024 Accepted: March 24, 2025 Published: June 30, 2025
Accurate postmortem interval (PMI) estimation is critical in forensic investigations and in vetero-legal procedures. Even though vitreous humour potassium concentration has been studied previously in humans and dogs to estimate PMI, studies on cats are scanty. The present study investigated vitreous potassium concentrations in cat carcasses different PMI and its potential for estimating PMI in cats. The cats with known PMI brought for post-mortem examination at the Department of Veterinary Pathology, College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Pookode, Wayanad formed the study material. Vitreous humour was collected from 12 cat carcasses with PMIs ranging from one to fifty-two hours. Data including the age and sex of the cats and ambient temperature at the time of collection were recorded. Potassium concentration was quantified from clear supernatant collected after centrifugation of vitreous humour using the ionselective electrode method. Statistical analysis revealed a strong positive correlation between potassium concentration and PMI (r= 0.919, p < 0.01) with no significant influence of age, sex or ambient temperature. Regression analyses demonstrated that potassium concentration explained 84.5% of the variance in PMI with the power regression model demonstrating the best predictive accuracy (R² = 0.978). This study confirms that vitreous potassium concentration is a robust biomarker for PMI estimation in cats in early periods after death and provides a reliable regression model for forensic applications.
Keywords: Post-mortem interval, vitreous humour, potassium concentration, cat, forensic veterinary medicine, regression model
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© 2025 Almas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
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Almas, F., Pradeep, M., George, A.J., Krishna, B.D., Devi, S.S., Rajasekhar, R., and Mansoor, N.K. 2025. Postmortem interval estimation in cats using vitreous potassium concentration Development of a regression model. J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 56 (2):236-239