ABSTRACT
Distinguishing between peripheral and menstrual blood is one of the most demanded and dicult tasks in forensic analysis and interpretation of evidence in sexual oence investigations. Obviously, it is crucial to dierentiate between peripheral blood indicating violent crime and menstrual blood not indicating any crime at all. Several presumptive methods proposed for menstrual blood are available based on the detection of brinogen and brin degradation products, or based on the electrophoretic separation pattern of lactate dehydrogenase isozymes (Asano et al. 1972; Whitehead and Divall 1974; Baker et al. 2011). More recently, immunochemical detection of three protein targets was evaluated: matrix metalloproteinase 14 (MMP14), estrogen receptor α (ERα), and brinogen (Gray et al. 2012). e
two former immunomarkers appeared to be specic to menstrual blood; however, they need to be conrmed in a larger sample set, including specimens from dierent days of menstrual cycle, before this test can be considered reliable.
