Objective: Overall goal of the experiment was to find the over the counter medicine that is responsible for an overdose caused death. The victim was found dead in their apartment and it is suspected that the death was caused by one of the over the counter medicines that the victim had. The over the counter medicines that are thought to be responsible are; migraine formula, 8-hour pain relief, 8-hour pain relief extra strength, niacin, and melatonin. The method by which these suspected medications are separated is an analysis using FTIR/ATR data from each of the samples. This data was analyzed along with a sample of the vomit from the victim in order to find the medication that caused the overdose1. Instruments: The instruments that were used …show more content…
The niacin has some correlation but it does not seem to be as strong as that of the melatonin. Table 2 shows the calculated correlation coefficients of the samples as related to the victim sample. The correlation coefficients from highest to lowest are; melatonin, niacin, migraine formula, 8-hour pain relief, and 8-hour pain relief extra strength. All of the data collected and calculated points towards melatonin being the culprit. However, this does not make logical sense due to the amount of melatonin needed to overdose being a very large amount. Although excess melatonin can cause hypothermia and the overproduction of prolactin which can cause kidney or liver problems3. So it is possible that the melatonin causes the death of victim if they had preexisting liver or kidney conditions. It is also possible that the vitamin B-6 in the melatonin tablet had an effect on the victim. Large amounts of vitamin B-6 can cause all sorts of negative effects including vomiting, nerve pain, seizures, and low blood sugar 4. Again if the patient had some kind of preexisting condition it would be more plausible that melatonin or vitamin b-6 are the