DSP2 for sex determination of miscegenated contemporary hip bones

Abstract

The bones of the human pelvis are used in sexual diagnosis generating a high level of accuracy for this type of identification. Morphological and/or morphometric methods are used in the identification of sex. Sexual dimorphism may be affected by ethnic differences in the population. One of the methods for determining sex using hip bone is the 'Diagnose Sexuelle Probabiliste (DSP)' or Probabilistic Sexual Diagnosis (DSP) method. The method presents a new version (Probabilistic Sexual Diagnosis v.2-DSP2) more advisable to be used because it has a more up-to-date database. The objective of this study is to investigate the applicability of the DSP2 method in a population in the Northeast region of Brazil. We used 128 hip bones, 50 female and 78 males, aged between 17 and 101 years, belonging to the Laboratory of Human Identification and Forensic Osteology of the University Federal Government of Pernambuco. The research was conducted between 2019 and 2020 and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Pernambuco no. 43228015.0.0000.5208. The probability equal to or greater than 0.95 was used as the limit for the determination of sex, and the results were compared with the actual sex of each bone. In the Brazilian collection study, it was observed that the percentage of sex estimation provided by the DSP2 tool using all reference samples was 71.09%, and accuracy was 64.06%. In the analysis of the gender estimate, 82.0% and 78% were obtained for females and males, respectively. Regarding accuracy, it was 64.10% and 55.13% for females and males, respectively. In the contemporary osteological collection of the Northeast region of Brazil, which presents immigrant peoples, we obtained a high index of assertiveness in the DSP2 method. The study concluded that the DSP2 method is important for determining the sex of human skeletons in a miscegenated population.

Keywords: DSP Method; diagnosis of sex; forensic anthropology; forensic sciences; hip bone; population data of forensic anthropology.