Original scientific paper
Dermatoglyphs and Brachial Plexus Palsy
Svetislav Polovina
Miljenko Cvjetičanin
Jasna Miličić
Tajana Polovina Prološčić
Abstract
Perinatal brachial plexus palsy (PBPP) is a handicap quite commonly encountered in daily routine. Although birth
trauma is considered to be the major cause of the defect, it has been observed that PBPP occurs only in some infants born
under identical or nearly identical conditions. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis of genetic predisposition
for PBPP. It is well known that digito-palmar dermatoglyphs can be used to determine hereditary roots of some diseases.
Thus, we found it meaningful to do a study analysis of digito-palmar dermatoglyphs in this disease as well, conducting
it on 140 subjects (70 males and 70 females) diagnosed with PBPP. The control group was composed of fingerprints obtained
from 400 adult and phenotypically healthy subjects (200 males and 200 females) from the Zagreb area. The results
of multivariate and univariate analysis of variance have shown statistically significant differences between the
groups observed. In spite of lower percentage of accurately classified female subjects by discriminant analysis, the results
of quantitative analysis of digito-palmar dermatoglyphs appeared to suggest a genetic predisposition for the occurrence
of PBPP.
Keywords
dermatoglyphs; brachial plexus palsy; perinatal; genetic predisposition
Hrčak ID:
27594
URI
Publication date:
12.5.2006.
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