A case of maternity testing: Exclusion by polymorphic VNTR markers of DNA

Abstract
The genetic markers of a Korean woman and her allegedly adopted child were compared to test her maternity. None of 21 conventional markers, including 8 red cell antigens, 6 red cell enzymes, and 7 serum proteins, excluded the maternity. These results indicate a maternal probability of 0.31 which was too low to conclude the true maternity. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A, -B, -C and -DR haplotyping was also uninformative in this case. The maternity was consequently excluded by the observation of a difference in 2 of 5 variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) markers.