TIAFT Young Scientist Meeting 2008-06-03 Summary Report

Attendance: 5 YSC members (Federica Bortolotti, Simon Elliott, Madeleine Montgomery, Frank Peters, and Helena Teixeira) and 46 young scientist attendees

Frank opened the meeting introducing himself and apologizing for the YSC Chairman Dimitri Gerostamoulos who unfortunately could not attend this year's meeting due to various court appointments and other important issues at home but sent his greetings to the young scientists.

Frank informed the young scientists about the recent changes in the YSC thanking the former members; Serap Annette Akgur, Robert Kronstrand, Marc Lebeau, and Nele Samyn for their hard and excellent work on the committee.

Then all attendees briefly introduced themselves to the others, as it has become a tradition in previous TIAFT Young Scientist meetings.

The first presentation of the day was given by Federica Bortolotti, who presented the highly interesting toxicological findings from the autopsy of the mummy of Cangrande I della Scala, Prince of Verona (1291-1329). Besides some findings attributable to relatively non-toxic herbal compounds, there was evidence of poisoning with digitalis, which would be consistent with contemporary reports of gastro-intestinal symptoms and rapid death despite the apparent good health of the 38 year old deceased. In the following discussion, important aspects like correcting for water loss when analyzing mummified tissue, potential cross-reactivity of immunoassay-based methods for determination of digitalis, and analyte degradation over hundreds of years were extensively discussed.

In the second presentation of the day, Simon Elliott gave an excellent talk on publishing and presenting scientific work. He started with general aspects of why scientists should publish their findings and continued with a detailed discussion of the most important types and different sections of scientific publication. Finally, he addressed the issue on where and how to present scientific work. Again, a lively discussion ensued as to how to choose an appropriate journal for a certain publication, and about the issue of consent from patients and/or authorities when publishing case data.

The third presentation was given by Helena Teixeira who spoke about the role of the toxicologist in autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death. Helena addressed important topics such as obtaining information from the scene of the crime/death, sampling of appropriate material for toxicological analysis, and typical signs of poisoning from the external investigation of the body during autopsy. Helena gave many examples from her own routine cases including many pictures of the respective autopsies. The discussion of Helena's talk was moderated by Lucia Politi from Italy, because the YSC members had to be present at the talk of an oral presentation award candidate at the parallel SoHT meeting. Discussion mainly related to experiences from young scientists from various countries as to whether the forensic toxicologist is usually present or not at autopsies of cases involving potential poisoning. It appeared that in most countries this is obviously not the case but the attendees agreed that it might enhance the quality of forensic toxicological analysis and also the co-operation with the pathologists.

After the coffee break, Sooyeun talked about the determination of measurement uncertainty in toxicological analysis. She began with basic aspects like definitions, equations, fishbone diagrams, etc. and continued with the practical aspects of measurement uncertainty, illustrating the whole process with an example from her recent work on determination of amphetamines in hair samples. Sooyeun's presentation was also extensively discussed. The main topics were the homogeneity of hair samples and the influence of sampling in general on measurement uncertainty and the availability of guidelines for its assessment in different countries.

Frank thanked the speakers for their excellent presentations and the audience for the lively discussion and the large attendance despite parallel sessions. The Young Scientist Meeting was then closed.

Dimitri Gerostamoulos
Chair, YSC