4. Discussion
The identification of menstrual blood by mRNA profiling is
a new and promising technique for the determination of the
origin of forensic stains and body fluids, an area of forensic
science that has been neglected over many years. Since our first
publication in 2002 dealing with the identification of menstrual
blood [1] several other groups started similar research activities
[2,4,5] and a growing number of police investigation teams has
shown interest in this test (personal communication). Although
it has to be expected that the overall case number will remain
low and that only a small number of selected laboratories
worldwide will be able to apply this method, there are realistic
case scenarios where the question menstrual or trauma blood
could be crucial: