COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FINGERPRINTS AND LIP PRINTS AMONG DIFFERENT ETHNIC GROUPS, SEX AND SEASONS OF BIRTH

(A CASE STUDY OF ZARIA, NIGERIA)

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Author

Presented To

Department of Medicine

ABSTRACT
The study was designed to determine the association between lip prints and fingerprints, the pattern of distribution of lip prints and their association with sex, ethnicity and season of birth in the study population. Eight hundred and twenty subjects (414 males and 406 females) participated in the study. The lip prints were obtained on microscopic glass slide and developed using carbon black powder, after which the prints were divided into 10 compartments and analyzed using magnifying lens. Conventional method of using ink pad was used to collect fingerprints of the 10 digits and analysis was done using chi square test, and a P. value less than or equal to 0.05 was considered as level of significance (P ≤ 0.05). The results of the study showed that left thumb prints were associated with lip prints in the Lower Left Lateral (LLL) and Lower Right Medial (LRM) compartments. The association of lip prints with sex, showed high statistically significant association (P< 0.001) with all the lip compartments except with the Lower Right Lateral (LRL) and Upper Median (UM) compartments. For the ethnic groups, only ULL compartment showed statistically significant association (P= 0.02). These indicate some level of sexual dimorphism and ethnic variation which may be linked to differences in genetic make up. The result showed that lip print pattern type V (31.39%) was predominant, followed by type III (24.18%), type IV (18.70%), type I (14.87%), type II (10.29%) and the least was type I’ (0.57%). The result also showed that the fingerprint pattern of loops had the highest percentage of 63.77%, followed by whorls with 32.35%, then the arches with least percentage of 4.07%. In conclusion, the lip print was found to be associated with sex, ethnicity and left thumb prints. Hence, lip prints hold potential promise as a supplementary tool in personal identification of suspects or unknown identity.