Association of Finger Ridge Pattern and E-beta-thalassemia: a Study on Bengalee Population of West Bengal, India

There is well documented relationship between dermatoglyphics and specific syndromes of genetic origins. Since beta-thalassemia is a major genetic disorder in West Bengal, India, therefore, rapid diagnosis of major beta thalassemia along with certain preventive measures is of utmost significance. The aim of the present study was to understand the association of the finger prints patterns among the E-beta thalassemia patients of Bengalee Hindu Caste population of West Ben-gal, India. To achieve the purpose, bilateral fingerprints have been collected from 100 (Male-50, Female-50) diagnosed E-beta thalassemia patients from Bengalee population in West Bengal using standard ink roller technique. Examination on finger pattern type revealed significantly (p < 0.05) higher Whorls among the male patients in comparison to their female counter part. On the other hand, significant (p < 0.05) excess of Arches has been found among the female patients compared to the male patients. Present study envisaged that these finger dermatoglyphics patterns might be helpful for the diagnosis and screening of E-beta thalassemia in Bengalee population.


Introduction
Dermatoglyphics attracted a great number of scientists from all sections of biology, medicine and biological * Corresponding author.
Dermatoglyphics was helpful for diagnosis of the beta-thalassemia patients worldwide (Dogramarci et al., 2009;Solhi et al., 2010).About 10% of total world thalassemia patients belong to Indian subcontinent, among them 3% -4% are carriers (Sinha et al., 2009).However, only few attempts have been conducted to study the dermatoglyphic patterns of the beta thalassemia patients (Saha et al., 1973;Bhalla et al., 2004;Rashida et al., 2012) in India.Eventually, general population has a prevalence of beta-thalassemia 3.60% -5.95% in West Bengal (Mohanty et al., 2013) and to best of the knowledge the present study is the first attempt to study the dermatoglyphics (finger print) patterns of the Bengalee E-beta-thalassemia patients in West Bengal.

Materials and Methods
The study was conducted among 100 (Male-50, Female-50) diagnosed E-beta-thalassemia patients from Bengalee Hindu Caste population of West Bengal.Before collecting the fingerprints written and/or verbal consent has been taken from each of the participants and the present work has obtained ethical committee clearance from University of Calcutta.Analyses of the finger prints have been classified mainly in four categories, viz.Whorl (W), Radial Loop (Lr), Ulnar Loop (Lu) and Arch (A) following standard method (Schaumann & Alter, 1976).The cut off for statistical significance level was set on p = 0.05.

Result and Discussion
Examination on finger print pattern revealed (Table 1) significant (p < 0.05) excess of Whorls in male E-betathalassemia patients in comparison to their female counterparts.In contrast, female E-beta-thalassemia patients demonstrated significantly higher (p < 0.05) prevalence of Arches and as well as Loop patterns compared to the male E-beta-thalassemia patients.Consequently a trend of higher Pattern Intensity Index (PII) has been observed in male E-beta thalassemia (13.64) than the female E-beta-thalassemia (12.54) patients due to significantly (p < 0.05) higher Arches and Ulnar Loops (Lu) in female E-beta-thalassemia patients.
The present study corroborated with the earlier study (Solhi et al., 2010) from Iran in terms of significant excess of the Whorl in thalassemia patients in comparison to the controls.On the other hand, significant (p < 0.05) excess of Loops among the female E-beta-thalassemia patients was found to be in corroboration with the earlier study from Turkey (Dogramarci et al., 2009).In Indian context, significant increase in Whorls among the thalassemia patients was also found in the different studies (Saha et al., 1973;Mahato et al., 2006;Dehankar et al., 2006) which is also evident in the present study as well.However, present study also vindicated significant (p < 0.05) sexual dimorphism in terms of increased Loops and Arches among the female E-beta-thalassemia patients.

Conclusion
The present study, therefore, envisaged distinctive dermatoglyphic features specifically excess of Whorl in male E-beta-thalassemia patients including significant excess of Loops and Arches as well can be used to reinforce clinical judgment through effective, inexpensive and non-invasive diagnosis and screening of E-beta-thalassemia patients of Eastern parts of India.

Table 1 .
Finger pattern types in male and female E-beta-thalassemia patients.