ArticleInternational journal of legal medicine2013
Influence of an individual's age on the amount and interpretability of DNA left on touched items.
Article in International journal of legal medicine, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- "Shedding the status"-a meta-analysis on the individual propensity to shed skin material in the context of forensic trace analysis.International journal of legal medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Impact of face-derived DNA on touch DNA deposition on cell phone screens.International journal of legal medicine · 2026Article
- An investigation into the background levels of DNA and saliva typically detectable on penises.International journal of legal medicine · 2026Article
- Assessment of DNA transfer and degradation in washing machines: forensic implications.International journal of legal medicine · 2025Article
- How to best assess shedder status: a comparison of popular shedder tests.International journal of legal medicine · 2025Article
- The Usefulness of qPCR Data for Sample Pre-Assessment and Interpretation of Genetic Typing Results.Genes · 2024Article
- Article
- STR typing of skin swabs from individuals after an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.International journal of legal medicine · 2023Article
- "I've never been at the crime scene!" - gloves as carriers for secondary DNA transfer.International journal of legal medicine · 2021Article
- The diversity of shedder tests and a novel factor that affects DNA transfer.International journal of legal medicine · 2021Review
- Touch DNA in forensic science: The use of laboratory-created eccrine fingerprints to quantify DNA loss.Forensic science international. Synergy · 2020Article
- Impact of several wearers on the persistence of DNA on clothes-a study with experimental scenarios.International journal of legal medicine · 2018Article
- Comparison of preprocessing methods and storage times for touch DNA samples.Croatian medical journal · 2017Article
- Sex-specific age association with primary DNA transfer.International journal of legal medicine · 2016Article
- DNA transfer-a never ending story. A study on scenarios involving a second person as carrier.International journal of legal medicine · 2016Article
- Everything clean? Transfer of DNA traces between textiles in the washtub.International journal of legal medicine · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In crime scene investigations, DNA left by touch on an object can be found frequently and the significant improvements in short tandem repeat (STR) amplification in recent years built up a high expectation to identify the individual(s) who touched the object by their DNA profile. Nevertheless, the percentage of reliably analysable samples varies considerably between different crime scenes even if the nature of the stains appears to be very similar. Here, it has been proposed that the amount and quality of DNA left at a crime scene may be influenced by external factors (like nature of the surface) and/or individual factors (like skin conditions). In this study, the influence of the age of an individual who left his DNA on an object is investigated. Handprints from 213 individuals (1 to 89 years old) left on a plastic syringe were analysed for DNA amount and STR alleles using Quantifiler® and PowerPlex® ESX 17. A full profile of the individual could be found in 75 % of all children up to 10 years, 9 % of adolescents (11 to 20 years), 25 % of adults (21 to 60 years) and 8 % of elderly people (older than 60 years). No person older than 80 years displayed a full profile. Drop-in and drop-out artefacts occurred frequently throughout the age groups. A dependency of quantity and quality of the DNA left on a touched object on the age of the individual could be clearly demonstrated at least for children and elderly people. An epithelial abrasion unexpectedly good to interpret may be derived from a child, whereas the suspected skin contact of an elderly person with an object may be impossible to prove.
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