The problem of single parent/child paternity analysis—Practical results involving 336 children and 348 unrelated men

Abstract 

In a certain amount of paternity investigations, only DNA from child and alleged father is analyzed, thus increasing the possibility of false paternity inclusions. The aim of this study was to determine how many wrong paternity inclusions could be detected in a rather small geographical area comparing empirical results from 336 children and 348 men (13–15 STRs were investigated per person). This comparison between each child and all unrelated men (i.e. all putative fathers from the other cases) with an especially designed computer program resulted in 116,004 man/child pairs. Less than three excluding STRs were found in 1666 child/unrelated man pairs (1.44% of the comparisons). At least one unrelated man with only two or less STR mismatches could be determined for 322 children (95.8% of all investigated children). In 26 comparisons no STR mismatches between a child and an unrelated man were detected, thus at least one and up to three “second father(s)” under 350 men could be found for 23 children, if the mother is excluded. Paternity probabilities between 95.475% and 99.996% were calculated. Our results underline the difficulties in motherless paternity cases using only STR analysis and advise great precaution in assigning verbal predicates such as “paternity proven” in those investigations.

Keywords: STR, Multiplex PCR, Paternity analysis, Single parent/child cases