Palatal Rugae in Gender Discrimination: Auxiliary or Hindrance? A Systematic Review

Uniqueness of rugae can be utilized similar to finger prints when compared with other methods in identification of a person, even with the presence of discrepancies in the patterns obtained in different populations. Nonetheless, it still cannot be used as a potential tool in gender discrimination. This study explored the debatable way of the use of palatal rugae for gender discrimination.  

Key words including “palatal rugae” and “sex determination” were used for searching of the following databases: PubMed Central, EMBASE, EBSCOhost and Cochrane from theearliest available date to January 2019. Out of 296 articles, 257 were excluded after abstract analysis. Only 8 articles were finally
included.

A total of 1,152 subjects participated in this study, among them, 577 were females and 575 were males. Significant differences were observed in the number, length, and shape of the rugaepatterns in both genders from one study to another.

In this analysis, we observed that females and males showed varied patterns of rugae on the palate, but males predominantly showed a particular pattern compared with females. Palatal rugae cannot be used as the only tool for gender discrimination.