“I don’t need help because if I can’t help myself I can’t be helped.” --Amy Winehouse
“Amy Winehouse found dead at her London flat…autopsy inconclusive…toxicology results expected in two to four weeks.”
by Jane Maddox, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Why do forensic toxicology results take so long? There are several reasons:
Multiple samples must be tested: blood, stomach contents, and urine are commonly first taken, but other tissues such as liver, brain, kidney, and vitreous humor of the eye may also be sampled.
If there are no obvious signs or symptoms linked to specific drugs or toxins observed at the time of death, testing for many different toxic substances must occur.
The tests must identify and quantify a wide repertoire of both legally prescribed drugs and illicit substances to determine if either any single drug or combination of drugs could have been the cause of death.
The initial tests would likely be immunoassays to screen for a wide variety of drugs suspected as the cause of death. These tests use antibodies to detect known drugs, but they can only measure a predetermined set of substances; therefore, if a new or unknown drug has been taken, it can be missed. Other analyses, such as mass spectrometry (that can identify unknown toxic substances) must also be performed. Mass spectrometry is very sensitive and specific, but it also takes more time to complete.
Once potentially toxic substances have been detected, the concentrations in the sample must be compared with clinical data to determine if the dose, or combination of doses, was high enough to be lethal. In addition, samples may be retested in the same laboratory or sent to a second laboratory for confirmation. Again, these tests take more time. Confirmatory tests are important for several reasons: 1) to ensure scientific integrity of the data, 2) to defend against potential legal issues involved in cause of death, particularly in the case of a celebrity death.
As for the death of Amy Winehouse, it is complicated.
She was alone at the time of death, so no symptoms were observed, and it was reported that no drugs or paraphernalia were found on the premises. Therefore, important clues to direct the toxicology testing were lacking and the search could take some time to complete.
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