Root dentin translucency and age at death estimation in adults using single rooted teeth: Update of the Forensic International Dental Database.

Since the publication of Lamendin's age estimation technique, the root dentin translucency has received increasing attention as an important indicator of age. Recently, Parra and colleagues presented the Forensic International Dental Database (FIDB), a proposal to estimate age at death in adults based on Bayes theorem by applying the criteria of Lamendin's technique. The present study aims to update the procedure and to evaluate a new version of the method (named FIDBv2) using two control samples from Colombia and Greece. The performance of this new version was acceptable and suggests that the method is suitable for age at death estimation in adult individuals from different forensic contexts. The best approximations to chronological age were obtained for individuals between 30 and 60 years old, with errors less than 10 years. The age estimations calculated on control samples suggest the adequate performance of FIDBv2 on individuals from varied populations. It can be stated that the FIDBv2 constitutes a solid alternative to be used in contexts where no additional data are available. Here we reinforce the initial idea that this model for estimating age at death in adults may be generalizable to any forensic context in the world.

Prevalencia serológica de infección por Trypanosoma cruzi en donadores de sangre en zonas endémicas para Enfermedad de Chagas en Costa Rica / Serologic prevalence of infection for trypanosoma cruzi in blood donors in endemic zones for chagas disease in Costa Rica

Se analizaron 2574 sueros de diferentes donadores de sangre, de tres Bancos de Sangre, de octubre de 1983 a setiembre de 1985 localizados en tres hospitales de la provincia donde acude la mayoría de las personas provenientes de áreas endémicas para la enfermedad de Chagas en Cosa Rica. Se empleó la técnica de hemaglutinación indirecta de Auerbach-Yanowsky, encontrándose una prevalencia real de anticuerpos ant T. cruzi de 0.93 por ciento. Se comprobó que en Costa Rica existe el riesgo de transmisión de este parásito por medio de la transfusión sanguínea. Se recomienda esta técnica para excluir a los donadores de sangre infectado con T. cruzi (Rev. Cost. Cienc. Méd. 1988; 9(4): 37-40)