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Chemistry & Crime: The Science Behind Solving CasesMain MenuWelcome!AuthorsHistory & Evolution of Forensic ScienceAn Introduction to Modern Forensic Scienceby Alyssa AdranedaForensic ToxicologyFingerprintingGunpowder ResidueBlood & DNAJane Lah689ef3bc5e8206f2e55474a83c1a71535b012294
Pathology Pathology (from the Greek word pathología, meaning the study of suffering) refers to the specialty of medical science concerned with the cause, development, structural/functional changes, and natural history associated with diseases.
Rigor mortis is possibly one of the most well known of the changes that occur in the human body after death. It describes the process that causes the muscles in the body to stiffen resulting in rigidity due to a range of chemical changes in the muscle structure. Muscle fibers rely on the conversion of ATP to ADP. After death, when breathing stops, the intracellular pH decreases due to the production of lactic and pyruvic acid (Rattenbury, 2018). The anaerobic glycolysis of glycogen in the muscles causes glycogen depletion and thus reduced ATP concentrations.
Funkhouser, W.K. (2012). Pathology: The Clinical Description of Human Disease. Molecular Pathology. 2009:197–207. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-374419-7.00011-1.