Comparative Study of Fingerprints and Lip Prints

The study was designed to determine the association between lip prints and fingerprints, the pattern of distribution of lip prints and their association with sex, ethnicity and season of birth in the study population. Eight hundred and twenty subjects (414 males and 406 females) participated in the study. The lip prints were obtained on microscopic glass slide and developed using carbon black powder, after which the prints were divided into 10 compartments and analyzed using magnifying lens. Conventional method of using ink pad was used to collect fingerprints of the 10 digits and analysis was done using chi square test, and a P. value less than or equal to 0.05 was considered as level of significance (P ¿ 0.05). The results of the study showed that left thumb prints were associated with lip prints in the Lower Left Lateral (LLL) and Lower Right Medial (LRM) compartments. The association of lip prints with sex, showed high statistically significant association (P< 0.001) with all the lip compartments except with the Lower Right Lateral (LRL) and Upper Median (UM) compartments. For the ethnic groups, only ULL compartment showed statistically significant association (P= 0.02).