The specific power of parentage exclusion in a child's blood relatives

BACKGROUND: The impersonation of parent and child by two other blood relatives is an important problem in parentage analysis involving potential immigrants. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: A statistic (A(R)) is proposed, based on the specific power of exclusion of paternity, which describes the ability of a child's test results to demonstrate evidence of nonparentage under the hypothesis that an ostensible parent is actually an older sibling. A case illustrates the value of A(R): a woman and her two alleged children were typed at 3 variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) loci after 18 short tandem repeat (STR) loci initially showed strong evidence of the woman's maternity of one child and her exclusion from parentage of the second. A(R) and 1 - A(R) were calculated from the STR types of the first child. RESULTS: The woman was excluded from maternity of both children with the additional VNTR tests. Given the 18 STR test findings of the first child, the probability was 12 percent that there would be no inconsistencies with parentage in a sibling pretending to be a parent. CONCLUSION: The value 1 - AR, siblings not excluded from parentage, explains how a seemingly large number of examined loci can fail to reveal even one genetic inconsistency if two siblings have posed as parent and child. Approximately 25 STR loci appear necessary to achieve 95 percent confidence of detecting at least one genetic inconsistency indicative of nonparentage.