Dermatoglyphic pattern in patients with bronchial asthma : A qualitative and quantitative study

Introduction: Palmar dermatoglyphics is a simple, inexpensive andnon-invasive anatomical procedure which may be used as a reliable indicator for screening of high risk population in a developing country like India. Bronchial asthma is influenced by genetic factors and the present study was carried out to correlate the dermatoglyphic quantitative & qualitative parameters in patients of bronchial asthma. Methodology: Dermatoglyphic prints were obtained from both hands of clinically diagnosed cases of 50 bronchial asthma patients in the age group of 20-80 years and 50 normal healthy individuals, without family history of bronchial asthma (control group). The study included both qualitative and quantitative tests. Qualitative study includes finger print patterns [whorls, radial loop, arches, and ulnar loop]. Quantitative study includes Total Finger Ridge count (TFRC), Absolute Finger ridge count (AFRC) and atd angle. Observations & Results: In this studya significantly higher number of ulnar loops were seen in the bronchial asthma groupand it was seen that the presence of arches were significantly lower than that compared to the control group. TFRC was seen to be significantly higher among the bronchial asthma patients. No significant results were obtained for AFRC.More elaborate studies with larger samples along with their first degree relatives need to be studied to get conclusive answers on whether dermatoglyphics can be used as a screening procedure.