Odontometric sex assessment in Indians

Abstract

Sex determination of unidentified skeletal remains is important and various hard-tissue parameters have been evaluated towards this end. The dentition is considered as a useful adjunct in skeletal sex determination, particularly since teeth are resistant to postmortem destruction and fragmentation. Sex dimorphism in tooth size and the accuracy of odontometric sex prediction, is found to vary in different regions and researchers have advocated the need for population-specific data. No odontometric standards exist for Indians for use in forensic sex prediction. Therefore, this study examined sexual dimorphism in Indians using univariate and multivariate statistics. Mesiodistal (MD) and buccolingual (BL) measurements of all teeth, except third molars, were obtained on dental casts of [corrected] 105 Indians (52 females, 53 males). The canines were [corrected] found to be the most dimorphic tooth, followed by the [corrected] BL dimensions of [corrected]first molars and that of mandibular second premolars. In general, mandibular teeth and BL dimensions showed greater tendency to be larger in males. However, just over a quarter of the measured variables (16/56; 28.6%) were statistically larger in males (p < 0.05). Moreover, ten tooth variables exhibited reverse dimorphism, i.e. female dimensions were larger than those of males. Stepwise discriminant function analysis revealed moderate accuracy in sex prediction: the teeth from both jaws taken together were able to determine sex to higher levels (76.2%) compared to only mandibular teeth (72.4%) or only maxillary teeth (67.6%). Interestingly, teeth that contributed to the stepwise discriminant analysis were either statistically larger in males or exhibited reverse dimorphism, indicating that such tooth variables may have better ability to correctly identify sex. [corrected]