A Morphologic Approach of Lip Prints in a Sample of Albanian Population in Kosovo

Background: Cheiloscopy (lip-print studies) is an important tool for the identification of human bodies in social and criminal issues. Lip prints present the labial mucosa with characteristic grooves and lines specific to every person. The purpose of this study was to analyze the lip prints among an adolescent sample of the Albanian population in Kosovo, to determine the most prevalent lip-print pattern in both genders, and to determine if there are any differences between male and female lip prints. Methods and Results: A total of 100 adolescents aged from 12 to 18 were randomly selected from schools in southeastern Kosovo. The lip prints were classified according to Suzuki and Tsuchihashi's classification (1970). For the analysis, the lips were divided into four quadrants: right upper quadrant, left upper quadrant, right lower quadrant, and left lower quadrant. The analysis was done using a magnifying glass. In the present study, the slightly prevalent lip-print pattern among all subjects was Type II (25.0%), followed by Type I (20.0%), Type III (17.0%), Type IV (16.0%), Type I′ (16.0%), and Type V (6.0%). The lip prints of Type IV were slightly more common in female subjects (24.0%), followed by Type II (20.0%), Type I (18.0%), Type III (18.0%), Type I′ (12.0%), and Type V (8.0%). Type II was slightly more common in male subjects (30.0%), followed by Type I (22.0%), Type I′ (20/0%), Type III (16.0%), Type IV (8.0%), and Type V (8.0%). However, some differences between the sexes, with a tendency toward the predominance of Type IV in women and Type II in men, were not statistically significant, and there was no significant difference between the lip patterns by quadrants in women and men.