Ruchika Kaushik

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Project Research Scientist II at All India Institute of Medical Sciences

Identifying missing persons and unidentified dead bodies is a well-documented global problem in recent years. To curb this issue, countries such as the USA, UK, and Australia already have well-established DNA databases. Considering the alarming number of unidentified/unclaimed dead bodies reported in India every year, it is evident that the current...

Touch DNA technique which is being used in many advanced countries as a modern tool in the criminal justice system. It is basically meant for acquiring genetic information from biological substances (cells released from epidermal surfaces) left on touched samples to establish it’s relatedness. It refers to the recovery of traces of DNA from the bio...

Background & objectives: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) contains valuable genetic information and plays a crucial role in missing person investigations, mass disasters, and forensic cases involving limited or degraded biological material. mtDNA is maternally inherited, with a highly variable control region divided into three hypervariable regions are ge...

Background Suicides are among the leading causes of death in the world and pose a major public health challenge. Mental health issues intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing an increase in the number of suicides globally. Contributory factors included social isolation, loneliness, unemployment, grief due to loss of family, fear of death,...

Globally, a suicide occurs every 43 seconds. In India, approximately 465 suicides took place daily in 2022, with a suicide rate of 12.4 per 100,000 population, exceeding the global rate of 9. This study aims to investigate differences in cytokine levels, including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), between individuals who died by suicide an...

International collaborations between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have become increasingly essential in advancing global health, particularly within psychiatric research. These partnerships not only accelerate scientific discovery and enhance public health, but they also bring to light significant challe...

International collaborations between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have become increasingly essential in advancing global health, particularly within psychiatric research. These partnerships not only accelerate scientific discovery and enhance public health, but they also bring to light significant challe...

Background: India currently accounts for a majority of global suicide deaths. Research in European ancestry has established that suicide mortality has a significant genetic component, and suggests that inflammation may play a crucial role in the pathophysiology of suicide. Inflammation is also highly relevant in regions of increased pollution expo...

Background: Suicide is a global health crisis that can be prevented, but current genome-wide studies on the subject are limited and lack sufficient statistical power. Most of these studies have focused on Caucasian populations. This study aimed to conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using the PsychArray to identify specific genetic varia...

A 35-year-old married male (father of two children) live streamed his hanging in a 3 min 46 s video. He was alone at home when he did this act, after bolting it from inside. The victim live-streamed his suicide probably to send a message to his loved ones, who might want to see him in his last moments as well as to explain, without saying a sing...

Background: Suicide is a preventable but escalating global health crisis. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) studies to date have been limited, and some are underpowered. In this study, we aimed to perform the PsychArray-based GWAS study to identify single nucleotide variations associated with suicide in the Indian population. Methods: We re...

Touch DNA is referred to as DNA that is recovered from very few cells (usually 6-7 in number) transferred from an individual to another object by means of contact through the skin. For extraction of touch DNA, careful handling and a very sensitive extraction technique is required. The objective of this study was to determine minimum fingerprints re...

E-Suicide notes