New semen testing kit raises quality of results
Independent Forensics, a leading United States DNA forensic laboratory, announced earlier this month the release of the Rapid Stain Identification Semen Kit (RSID-Semen), the worlds first fluid specific test for the presence of semen.
Independent Forensics, a leading United States DNA forensic laboratory, announced earlier this month the release of the Rapid Stain Identification Semen Kit (RSID-Semen), the worlds first fluid specific test for the presence of semen.
The kit is specific for human semenogelin antigens and will not cross react with the myriad of other human body fluids that can cause false positives, a problem with other non-specific technology in the marketplace.
Currently, semen testing kits are used for two different purposes by two separate communities. Police departments and forensic labs use sophisticated kits for rape analysis and consumers use a commercially available variant called a cheater kit for detecting infidelity. Both types of kits cross-react with other body fluids such as saliva, vaginal fluid, menstrual blood and a host of animal fluids, yielding many false positive results, said Karl Reich, PhD, chief scientific officer for Independent Forensics.
Approximately 200,000 rape kits are analysed each year in the US. It is widely accepted that only a small percentage of all rapes get reported to the police, and many of the 200,000 kits sit on the shelves as part of an ever-increasing backlog of DNA samples.
The RSID-Semen kit will help crime laboratories correctly identify which samples should go forward for DNA analysis.
A false positive from one of the many so-called home administered cheater kits will necessitate a trip to a bona fide forensics lab to confirm those preliminary results. Our semen detection kit takes the guesswork out of the process and delivers immediate accurate results, eliminating a step in the analysis process, he added.
Thousands of the non-specific home administered cheater kits have led to false and misleading results. The RSID-Semen Kit is being supplied to all the major crime labs in the United States as well as Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, and promises to set a new benchmark for forensic identification of seminal fluid.