Forensic Context

A study in humans identified the miR-654-5p as a novel microRNA marker for vaginal secretion identification, demonstrating its high overexpression in vaginal secretions and high sensitivity and specificity with an area under the ROC curve of 0.81 when evaluated by qRT-PCR in additional body fluid samples [Park et al. DOI:10.1002/elps.201400075]. A subsequent human study noted that the miR-654-5p was removed from its final analysis due to low amplification efficiency in the target body fluid [Sauer et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2016.01.018]. A study in humans demonstrated that the miR-654-5p is a specific marker for vaginal secretions and was used in a nine-miRNA-marker discriminant analysis model for identifying vaginal secretions, saliva, semen, menstrual blood, and peripheral blood [Song et al. DOI:10.1007/s00414-023-03091-1]. This biomarker was also noted as a specific marker for vaginal secretions in forensic body fluid identification [Liu et al. DOI:10.1007/s00414-025-03656-2].