We Can Now Tell a Person’s Age Range From Crime Scene Blood
A new method can quickly but accurately narrow down whether someone is an adult or a juvenile based on fluids left behind.
There might be a way to help nail down a crime suspect in old blood.
Chemists at the University at Albany, SUNY, have described a new method for quickly but accurately determining a person’s age range based only on a blood sample. The test could one day be used to help narrow down suspects in a crime scene investigation as easily as getting results from a glucose or pregnancy test.
“I hope it will change [and] accelerate the investigation, so you can know right away what is happening,” says Jan Halámek, co-author of the paper, which was published in May in Analytical Chemistry.
Traditional DNA analysis can take up to 72 hours and carries no reliable information about a person’s
