1. GHEP-ISFG collaborative simulated exercise for DVI/MPI: Lessons learned about large-scale profile database comparisons
- Author
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María Jose Jimenez Pleguezuelos, Lourdes Prieto, Jorge Puente Prieto, Gustavo Penacino, David Alvarez, Thomas J. Parsons, Irati Miguel Manterola, Laura Catelli, Alejandro Hernández Bolaños, Maria João Porto, Alicia Bofarull Castro, Victor G. Saragoni, Carola Romanini, Mustafa Šakić, Santiago Zabalza, Carlos Vullo, V. Prieto, Magdalena Romero, A. Hernández, and M.J Farfán
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Forensic Genetics ,Matching (statistics) ,Computer science ,Pedigree chart ,computer.software_genre ,Pathology and Forensic Medicine ,Genetic profile ,Disasters ,03 medical and health sciences ,Bayes' theorem ,0302 clinical medicine ,Databases, Genetic ,Genetics ,Humans ,030216 legal & forensic medicine ,Cooperative Behavior ,Database ,Portugal ,Bayes Theorem ,DNA ,16. Peace & justice ,DNA Fingerprinting ,Pedigree ,Identification (information) ,030104 developmental biology ,Spain ,Scale (social sciences) ,Biometric Identification ,Reference database ,computer ,Forensic genetics ,Microsatellite Repeats - Abstract
The GHEP-ISFG Working Group has recognized the importance of assisting DNA laboratories to gain expertise in handling DVI or missing persons identification (MPI) projects which involve the need for large-scale genetic profile comparisons. Eleven laboratories participated in a DNA matching exercise to identify victims from a hypothetical conflict with 193 missing persons. The post mortem database was comprised of 87 skeletal remain profiles from a secondary mass grave displaying a minimal number of 58 individuals with evidence of commingling. The reference database was represented by 286 family reference profiles with diverse pedigrees. The goal of the exercise was to correctly discover re-associations and family matches. The results of direct matching for commingled remains re-associations were correct and fully concordant among all laboratories. However, the kinship analysis for missing persons identifications showed variable results among the participants. There was a group of laboratories with correct, concordant results but nearly half of the others showed discrepant results exhibiting likelihood ratio differences of several degrees of magnitude in some cases. Three main errors were detected: (a) some laboratories did not use the complete reference family genetic data to report the match with the remains, (b) the identity and/or non-identity hypotheses were sometimes wrongly expressed in the likelihood ratio calculations, and (c) many laboratories did not properly evaluate the prior odds for the event. The results suggest that large-scale profile comparisons for DVI or MPI is a challenge for forensic genetics laboratories and the statistical treatment of DNA matching and the Bayesian framework should be better standardized among laboratories.
- Published
- 2015