Digital and Palmar Dermatoglyphic Patterns of Medical Students of Bingham University, Karu, Nasarawa State Nigeria

Abstract

Dermatoglyphic traits are genetically determined and most importantly remain constant before birth until death. These traits reflect prenatal developmental stability. Dermatoglyphic features of medical students of Bingham University, Nigeria who are to proceed into clinical classes were studied to know the patterns of dermatoglyphic distributions among the male and female medical students. A total number of Sixty Two (62) medical students comprising twenty seven (27) male and thirty five (35) female students were employed for this study. Finger and palm prints were obtained according to the methods of Cummins using ink. The printink was uniformly smeared on the palmer and finger surfaces to obtain complete print of the finger tips and the palmer surfaces. Dermatoglyphic parameters were analysed with the aid of magnifying lens (X 20), the finger ridge counts (FRC), total finger ridge counts (TFRC), absolute finger ridge counts (AFRC) in male students were significantly higher than in female medical students. However, insignificant differences were noticed in palmer tri-radial angles measured (<ATD, <DAT, <ADT) and other palmer parameters such as a-b ridge counts, a-b distances and the degrees of transversality of the palmer ridges were relatively the same as shown by the main line index. Ulnar loop patterns followed by whorl patterns were found to be dominantly distributed in both male and female medical students, however, ulnar loops and spiral whorls were more prevalent (P<0.05) in male compared with female medical students. Arches were noticed to be distributed more in percentage among the female students. Therefore, in this cross-sectional descriptive study, dermatoglyphic features of presumably normal male and female individuals were found to be of great importance in basic data documentation especially in this part of the Nigeria.