Infidelity Testing
GE Investigations offers DNA testing and other laboratory services through an accredited DNA laboratory (not a test kit).
Reliable statistics on the frequency of marital infidelity are hard to come by, however one expert,
Peggy Vaughan, author of The Monogamy Myth, estimates that 60 percent of husbands and 40
percent of wives will have an affair at some point in their marriage. Less than ten (10) percent of
people who have affairs marry their lovers and seventeen (17) percent of divorces in the United
States are caused by infidelity.
Evidence of Infidelity
During and after sexual activity, semen, containing up to 300 million sperm, can be deposited on
undergarments, panties, bed sheets, clothing, upholstery or other surfaces. Sperm can last as long
as 3-5 days in the vagina and remain identifiable for years as dried stains.
There are two primary techniques that can be utilized to characterized suspicious stains, semen
screening and DNA testing.
Semen Screening
Articles containing suspicious stains can be rapidly and reliably screened for the presence of semen
utilizing a combination of three techniques: ultraviolet illumination, prostrate specific antigen (p30)
and microscopy.
Ultraviolet Examination
Ultraviolet (UV) light is a popular tool in many forensic investigations for the presumptive
identification of body fluids on a variety of substrates. Materials such as semen, saliva, perspiration
and vaginal secretions are naturally fluorescent under UV light which offers a discriminating method
for locating these stains which might otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. Once the precise
location of the stain is determined, confirmatory testing can be conducted utilizing the p30 and
microscopy techniques.
Prostate Specific Antigen (p30)
Prostate specific antigen, also known as p30, is secreted into seminal fluid at concentrations
ranging from 200,000 to 5.5 million nanograms per milliliter. The p30 test is an extremely sensitive
confirmatory technique that allows for the low level detection of seminal fluid in stains. The
technique is extremely powerful because it can confirm the presence of semen even in samples
from sterile or vasectomized men.
Microscopy
Sperm heads can be accurately identified based on their morphological characteristics via
microscopy.
DNA Testing
Once a suspect stain has been confirmed to be semen via the screening procedure, the source of
the stain needs to be determined. This involves testing DNA from the stain and a reference sample
collected from the known male partner. This reference sample can be a cheek swab.
Biological stains resulting from sexual activity often contain a mixture of both male and female DNA.
The female DNA usually originates from epithelial cells from the vaginal wall, the mouth or skin.
Stains are first processed with a differential extraction that takes advantage of the unique
characteristic of each cell type. A DNA profile is generated from each stain extract and DNA from
the male reference. If the male DNA in the stain does not match that of the DNA from the reference
man, the results indicate that the semen stain is from another man.
When you order a Semen Screen Test or Semen Screen + DNA Test you will receive a free sampling
kit with instructions pertaining to the proper way to submit your samples along with materials to
perform the cheek swab (for the DNA Test portion).
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