Dental patterns to replace DNA test for identifying dead bodies

Initiated by a team of researchers from the University of Granada in Spain, the present study provides the forensic police with a second option for identification of a corpse apart from the already used method of DNA testing.

“There is sufficient dental diversity between people to enable a scientifically-based human identification method to be developed for forensic purposes," informed the lead author of the present study, Stella Martin de las Heras who is also a professor of dentistry at the University.

According to the researchers, dental patterns of every living individual differ from each other and identification through this method can never be wrong.

Study Details
For the present study, the researchers conducted statistical analysis of the dental patterns of 3,166 full and partial teeth sets for more than 3,000 people. The data for the study came from recent dental surveys done in 1993, 2000 and 2005 under the title of National Survey of Oral Health.

The team of researchers used the findings of the surveys to estimate conditioned dental diversity. They eliminated the study subjects who had healthy teeth or those who had no teeth at all, as they could not come handy for the purpose of identification of body.

On a scale of 0 to 1, the results of the latest dental research showed a variability value of 0.999, “Which is comparable to the rates for a scientifically-based identification method such as mitochondrial DNA", added Stella Martin de las Heras.

Identification of body using dental patterns method
In this method, the researchers perform an oral autopsy of the deceased to get the dental information of the deceased to identify the body.

Many diverse techniques are used by the forensic researchers to conduct the oral autopsy and this is mainly dependant on the body’s preservation condition.

In most cases, the maxillary bones are removed by the scientists to find out major details that can never be identified normally.

After the information is extracted, the dental pattern is compared with the dental data of the person when he was alive. This data is provided either by dentists or by the family members.

Finally, IT programmes are used to compare and identify the body.

Limitations of using dental patterns
”Dental characteristics have low stability within the population compared with mitochondrial DNA sequences, which are only affected by mutations and heteroplasmy,” says Stella.

“But by analyzing the data bases of dental patterns in Spanish populations according to different age groups and birth cohorts, we found test results with high homogeneity for all the databases, which shows the value of this system for identifying people, and its forensic utility”, she concludes.

The study has been detailed in the journal, Forensic Science International.