Student name and initials: Mosehla MR

Student no: 202102885

MBCHB 4

FORENSIC MEDICINE

DEATH AND POST-MORTEM CHANGES

11 March 2024
Write short notes on the pathogenesis of rigor mortis.

● Alternatively called as cadaveric rigidity, it is the stiffening of the

muscles after death.
● Following death, muscles of the body pass through three phases, i.e.
primary flaccidity, which occurs immediately after somatic death as has
been described earlier. Here the muscles are able to respond to
electrical or chemical stimuli.
● The second stage is the development of rigidity known as rigor mortis
during which there is no longer any response to the electrical or
chemical stimuli and the third stage is the secondary flaccidity or stage
of resolution when the rigor passes away that coincides with the onset
of putrefaction.

The process of development of rigor may be studied under the following

phases.

First phase:

● After somatic death, the muscle remains in a normal state for

‘sometime’ as long as there remains sufficient ATP to permit the
dissociation of the actin–myosin cross-bridges.
● Obviously, the rate of ATP depletion will depend upon its content and
on the rate of ATP hydrolysis at the time of death.
● This ‘sometime’ as mentioned above, therefore, represents the time
during which the dead body is capable of utilising the ATP already
present and its resynthesis from the available glycogen stores, as the
cellular death has not yet occurred.
● This explains indirectly the rapid onset of rigor in the circumstances
where the stores of glycogen are depleted by vigorous exercise prior to
death, say, death following epileptic attacks or tetanic spasms or
electrocution or strychnine poisoning or any other violent activity prior
to death.

Second phase:

● When the ATP content of the muscle falls below a critical level, the
cross-bridges remain bound and the muscles tend to turn into viscous,
inextensible dehydrated stiff gel like state that accounts for the onset of
rigor mortis.
 ● However, this state is still reversible by addition of ATP or O2. It has
been reported that rigor is initiated when ATP concentration falls to
85% of the normal and the rigidity of the muscle is maximum when the
level declines to 15%.

Third phase:

● Rigidity becomes fully developed and irreversible.

Fourth phase:

● It may also be called the ‘Phase of Resolution’ when the rigidity

disappears and the muscle becomes limp and loose.
● The cause of the resolution is not definitely known. One view is that it
is a denaturation process due to development of enzymes in the dead
muscles, which dissolve myosin by a process of autodigestion.
● The other view is that the process is pH dependent occurring due to
solution of myosin by excess of acid produced during the continuance
of rigidity.

Discuss the estimation of time of death with an emphasis on medico-

legal significance. (10

IMPORTANCE OF TIME SINCE DEATH

● Determination of reasonably accurate time since death has a bearing

on the issues of ‘alibi’ and ‘opportunity’. If a suspect can prove that he
was remote from the victim when the fatal incidence occurred and
thereby his innocence may be implicit.
● Conversely, if it is shown that the lethal attack occurred when the
suspect was known to be in the neighbourhood of the victim, he
thereby had an opportunity for committing the crime.
● When several suspects are being sorted out, the estimation of this
postmortem interval may be extremely helpful in the screening
procedure to exclude some putative killers, who could not be able to
approach the victim at that particular time and may help in giving more
weightage towards the others whose movements/activities happened
to coincide with the estimated time.
● Therefore, any doctor, while reporting on such issues, must be wary of
relying on any single observation so as to be able to withstand intense
cross-examination in the courts, many months or may be many years
after the reporting.
● In the civil cases also, it may have implications. As stated in the
beginning, the matters concerning transfer of estate or property any
months or may be many years after the reporting may hinge upon this
time of death.