Insulin in Forensic Medicine and Toxicology

Today insulin is used not only in medicine in the treatment of diabetes but also in sport as a doping agent and for criminal purposes. Suicides and homicides with insulin maybe are not so common, but are seen in the routine medicolegal and toxicological-clinical practice. Despite the often quite clear circumstances of death and a well-established mechanism of action of insulin and its analogs, it is difficult to analytically confirm its excessive exogenous administration in postmortem biological material. There are no uniform international standards of conduct in such cases, both at the stage of the material sampling during autopsy and forensic laboratory analysis and the final interpretation of the obtained results. The aim of the study is to present the current state of basic knowledge about nonmedical use of insulin, with particular emphasis on the possibility of postmortem diagnosis. The study also highlighted the little known clinical problem of insulin abuse for recreational purposes