Information About Paternity Testing With Hair

By Author: Glenn Farrier
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Paternity testing with hair is just one of the many options available when one is unable to carry out sampling of genetic material using oral swabs. The following article provides some of the most important points of using hairs for a DNA test.

Why is the use of oral swabs encouraged for a paternity test?

Using oral swabs provides higher chances of success than paternity testing with hair. In other words, the chances of extracting a complete profile for the alleged father and child are better with oral swabs. Oral swabs make it very easy and painless for you to collect DNA as they only need to be rubbed gently against the inside of the mouth for a couple of seconds. The only sample that provides a higher success rate than swabs is a blood DNA test (not blood stains, however, but blood collected via a medical blood draw). The success rate using oral swabs is around 95%.

Paternity Testing with hair: Collecting your DNA sample

Collecting hair samples is not as easy and straightforward as you may have thought. First and foremost, the hair you provide need to have the root (the hair follicle attached). ...
... Why? The answer is simple: DNA is only found in the root of the hair. In other words, for hair to still have the root attached it needs to be plucked out of the skin. This makes it rather difficult to collect a suitable hair sample for testing, all the more if you intend doing the test “discretely”. You will also need to provide between 4-6 hairs for hair analysis to be viable. If you only have 1 or 2 hairs, the chances of success of course become lower. The success rate for hair DNA testing is around 65%.

Further information about DNA tests using hair and results

Once the laboratory has extracted the DNA from the hair provided, the results of the test are always the same, independently of the type of sample you used. Paternity testing with hair will provide as accurate a result a paternity testing with oral swabs but only once the laboratory have successfully completed the first part of the test – the extraction of the DNA profile. If the alleged father is the biological father of the child the result will show a minimum probability of 99.9%. If the tested, alleged father is not the biological father of the child, even if he is a very close blood relative), the probability of paternity will be 0%. The company you choose will provide you with full guidelines on paternity testing with hair and may even suggest a better sample.

Karl McDonald specializes in articles providing general information about forensic DNA testing including articles about Paternity testing with hair. Other articles can be found on the Author’s website: http://www.hairdnatest.com/