NCJ Number
103042
Date Published
1986
Length
31 pages
Annotation
Skeletal pathology may prove useful in determining sex in cases where this might otherwise be difficult or impossible to prove.
Abstract
A variety of infectious diseases, circulatory disturbance, tumors, metabolic disorders, and other pathological conditions with distinct sexual distributions affect the skeleton. For instance, hematogenous osteomyelitis, blastomycosis, avascular necrosis, hemophilic arthropathy gout, and Paget's disease are significantly more common among males. Freiberg's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, fibrous dysplasia, and pregnancy arthritis, fibrous dysplasia, and pregnancy osteophyte affect largely or exclusively females. Similarly, skeletal metastases associated with breast and prostate carcinoma can provide the bases for determinations of victim sex. Such pathological conditions can prove useful in establishing congruence with medical histories or behavioral patterns in cases of tentative identification and also may be of use in cases in which there is no suggestion as to possible identity of the decedent and few or no traditional metric or morphological features. Photographs and 44 references.