Sarah Gino

• MD
• Associate Professor at University of Piemonte Orientale Amedeo Avogadro

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a form of gender-based violence (GBV) that may lead to adverse consequences on the physical and psychological health of survivors. Patients living with FGM have unique health needs, which have to be addressed from the perspective of human rights and sexual and reproductive health. The aim of this study was to unde...

Introduction: The Sexual Violence Relief center Soccorso Violenza Sessuale (SVS) is a specialist service, situated in Sant’Anna Hospital, an Obstetrics and Gynecology facility in Turin, North-West Italy. The study aimed to qualitatively analyze the transcripts of interviews routinely conducted by gynecologist and midwife in the first part of the...

In the original publication [...]

Considering the growing importance of microbiome analyses in forensics for identifying individuals, this study explores the transfer of the skin microbiome onto clothing, its persistence on fabrics over time, and its transferability from the environment and between different garments. Furthermore, this project compares three specific QIAGEN microbi...

This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the association between drugs and alcohol intake and sexual abuse in adolescents, otherwise defined as Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault (DFSA). We considered the survivors who accessed care at the Centre “Soccorso Violenza Sessuale” (SVS – Sexual Violence Relief Centre) in Turin (Italy), between May 2003 an...

Abstract: Background: Gelatin-xanthan gum (Gel-Xnt) hydrogel has been previously modified to improve its printability; now, to increase its ability for use as cell-laden 3D scaffolds (bioink), polydopamine (PDA), a biocompatible, antibacterial, adhesive, and antioxidant mussel-inspired biopolymer, has been added (1-3% v/v) to hydrogel. Methods: Con...

Since the biobanks’ inception in 1980, millions of human biological samples have been stored worldwide for medical research or treatment purposes. Today the secondary use of biobanks plays an increasingly important role in research projects because it allows large-scale research starting from professional collections of biospecimens and related cli...

Background and Objectives: Sexual violence (SV) is a major global public health concern. While socioeconomic factors and familial relationships have been widely reported to contribute to SV, the role of alcohol consumption should not be ignored. Indeed, alcohol can impair cognition, distort reality, increase aggression, and ease drug-facilitated se...

Background Conflicts exacerbate dynamics of power and inequalities through violence normalization, which acts as a facilitator for conflict-related sexual violence. Literature addressing its negative outcomes on survivors is scant. The aim of this systematic review was to analyze the qualitative evidence reported in scientific literature and focusi...

The innate immune system is the first line of defense of the body composed of anatomical barriers, such as skin and mucosa, as well as effector cells, antimicrobial peptides, soluble mediators, and cell receptors able to detect and destroy viruses and bacteria and to sense trauma and wounds to initiate repair. The human �-defensins belong to a fami...

Incidental findings (IFs) are unexpected disclosures that do not fall within the aim of a test and have a potential impact on an individual’s life. In the forensic field, IFs can be considered information that is not related to the cause of death, the dynamic of the event, or the scope of the investigation. Questions regarding how forensic professi...

Introduction Human donations are often used in forensic research as they can provide unique insights into post-mortem research that cannot be obtained with animal proxies. This is especially true for forensic microbiome research, as human circumstances such as drug-use or health conditions may influence the post-mortem microbiome. However, it is no...

The human oral microbiome has primarily been studied in clinical settings and for medical purposes. More recently, oral microbial research has been incorporated into other areas of study. In forensics, research has aimed to exploit the variation in composition of the oral microbiome to answer forensic relevant topics, such as human identification a...

Background: Child abuse is an endemic phenomenon that refers to any form of violence aimed at children and adolescents. The Emergency Room is often the entry point to healthcare for the abused child. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study including minors, aged 0-18 years, of all genders, who experienced any form of violence examined at the Pa...

A cross-sectional study was conducted that describes the characteristics of sexual violence episodes related to the intake of alcohol and drugs observed among women that turned to the “Centro Soccorso Violenza Sessuale” (SVS) of the Sant’Anna Hospital in Turin between 1 January 2008, and 31 December 2017. Two hundred twenty-two patients were enroll...

Violence against women is a growing health problem, especially when perpetrated in intimate relationships. Despite increasing attention, there is little comparative evidence on the different types of violence involved and there is a paucity of research on sexual femicides. This study examines cases of violence against women in northern Italy, focus...

Personal identification in mass disasters and in crimes is essential for humanitarian, ethical and legal reasons. In these contexts, when individuals cannot be identified by standard forensic DNA analysis, the Forensic DNA Phenotyping and the analysis of the biogeographical ancestry could help. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of...

The interest in the analysis of the human microbiome for personal identification purposes is based on the microbial diversity amongst individuals. The oral cavity hosts one of the most diverse and abundant microbial communities in the human body; the skin instead is a complex living ecosystem with unique microbial niches at different sites. Both sk...

Human DNA samples can remain unaltered for years and preserve important genetic information for forensic investigations. In fact, besides human genetic information, these extracts potentially contain additional valuable information: microbiome signatures. Forensic microbiology is rapidly becoming a significant tool for estimating post-mortem interv...

Human DNA samples can remain unaltered for years and preserve important genetic information for forensic investigations. In fact, besides human genetic information, these extracts potentially contain additional valuable information: microbiome signatures. Forensic microbiology is rapidly becoming a significant tool for estimating post-mortem interv...

Microbiome studies are attracting increasing attention among forensic experts due to their potential to reveal valuable information related to individual identity, including geographical origin, health status, postmortem interval (PMI), and even lifestyle of the deceased[1]. To date, microbiome studies have mostly used animal proxies, allowing for...

Cannabis sativa is the most used controlled substance in Europe. With the advent of new and less restrictive European laws on cannabis sale for recreational use (including in Italy), an increase in indoor cannabis crops were observed. This increase was possible due to the availability of cannabis seeds through the internet market. Genetic identific...

Human skin hosts a variety of microbes that can be transferred to surfaces (“touch microbiome”). These microorganisms could be considered as forensic markers similarly to “touch DNA”. With this pilot study, we wanted to evaluate the transferability and persistence of the “touch microbiome” on a surface after the deposition of a fingerprint and its...

Violence against women is a form of gender violence, and the lethal aspect of it, defined as femicide, is a global health and human rights problem. This study looked at 330 cases of femicide that occurred in North West Italy, between 1970 and 2020, committed by 303 male perpetrators. The victims included women who were prostitutes and those who wer...

Microvesicles (MVs, 100–1000 nm diameter) are released into the extracellular environment by mammalian cells. MVs interact with near or remote cells through different mechanisms; in particular, MVs from human keratinocytes accelerate wound healing. Photobiomodulation by laser improves wound healing, but no information is available about its effects...

Nowadays, the world's population is ageing, causing the growth of a new category of patients: elderly people affected by a particular vulnerability due to the simultaneous presence of multiple chronic diseases, fragility, and disability. Because of the ageing population, elder abuse is dramatically increasing too. Despite its prevalence and serious...

Pregnant women can be victims of violence: as a matter of fact, far from being a protective factor, pregnancy can trigger or worsen episodes of abuse. Studies conducted by the WHO highlight that its incidence fluctuates between 1% and 28%. Therefore violence during pregnancy is endemic all over the world and involves all social strata. We analysed...

The oral microbiome harbours microbial community signatures that differ among individuals, highlighting that it could be highly individualizing and potentially unique to each individual. Therefore, the oral microbial traces collected in crime scenes could produce investigative leads. This narrative review will describe the current state-of-the-art...

Objective: Platelet rich plasma (PRP) is a haemoderivative used in clinical practice for the treatment of hard-to-heal wounds. Platelet (PLT) activation is a key factor in the wound healing process leading to the production of extracellular vesicles. We obtained PRP and PRP-derived microvesicles (PLT-MVs) from healthy donors and compared their pro...

Nel presente articolo vengono discusse alcune criticità relative alla gestione delle donne vittime di violenza sessuale alla luce delle nuove linee guida nazionali contenute nel D.P.C.M. 24 novembre 2017. La violenza sessuale è un evento traumatico assai complesso, che richiede un approccio multidisciplinare al fine di far fronte alle necessità del...

Microbiome research is a highly transdisciplinary field with a wide range of applications and methods for studying it, involving different computational approaches and models. The fact that different people host radically different microbiota highlights forensic perspectives in understanding what leads to this variation and what regulates it, in or...

Violence against women is a violation of human rights, crossing all cultures, classes, levels of education, earnings, ethnic and age groups. We conducted a retrospective study to review forensic records of sexual assault examinations carried out in different Italian health facilities and to correlate these findings with the results of the forensic...

The choice of soft or hard tissues to be sampled in case of exhumation of corpses for identification purposes or family relationship testing is based on the degradation conditions of the corpse: the more the corpse is degraded, the less DNA is expected to be retrieved from soft tissue. Therefore, the choice of the "best" tissue samples usually fall...

With the progress of technologies, forensic genetic laboratories have been more frequently involved in "cold case". The aim of this study was to understand whether the DNA extracted and stored for a long time at−20 °C could be useful for new analyses in order to identify the perpetrator of unsolved crimes, especially when evidence is no longer avai...

We conducted a retrospective study to analyse the ways in which sexual abuse was handled by the Italian forensic geneticists in order to delineate common strategies in the management of the collected biological samples. In particular, the results of laboratory analyses were compared with the patients’ reports and the outcome of their medical examin...

This paper addresses femicide in Italy. The assumption is that femicide is not a discrete act of killing a woman. It is assumed that depending on the types of relationship between the victim and the perpetrator (e.g., known versus unknown, intimate versus acquaintance), the risk processes may differ. When femicide involves the killing of an intimat...

This study focuses on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and how it escalates into femicide. 275 women killed in Turin, between 1970 and 2016, by 260 males, with whom they were involved in a more or less intimate relationship comprise the sample of this study. The findings show that 77.9% of the women were killed by a man they knew, and that escalatio...

Violence against women is a disabler of dignity, liberty, and rights of the person, with murder being its extreme form for silencing the individual. Despite psycho-criminological research providing evidence that violence can happen across cultures, sexes, and societies, other findings show that some forms of violence i.e. Intimate Partner Violence...

The phenomenon of migration is often related to violence and exploitation. Data collection in conflict-affected countries is hard and complicated by the lack of literature, especially on the health of migrant female victims of violence. The aim of our study has been to realise a clinical and forensic evaluation on African female migrant’s global he...

The assistance provided by specialised healthcare personnel to victims of a sexual violence cannot focus just on the clinical intervention appropriate for the lesions suffered by the patient, but must also take legal and forensic needs into account. Anamnestic data represents a crucial step towards the finding of forensic evidence. Our retrospectiv...

In April 2011, the corpse of a young woman, who disappeared two days earlier, was found in a forest in Ripe di Civitella del Tronto (Provice of Teramo, Italy). The conclusions of the first medicolegal consultants were widely disputed, so the Judge for the Preliminary Investigation of the Court of Teramo asked our laboratory to review the case. One...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) usually has a negligible role in forensic casework and is only taken into account by forensic scientists if familiar testing is necessary or when genomic DNA (gDNA) is degraded. The forensic workflow normally does not include validated protocols to calculate the amount of mtDNA in a trace or the ratio between gDNA and mtDN...

Suspicious packages, strange addresses on envelopes and/or the presence of particular powders: these are the most popular aspects of letters containing Bacillus anthracis. Since the World Trade Center tragedy, alarmism about chemical or biological attacks is always in force. The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs introduced new procedures to be fo...

Genotyping of transcribed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in cDNA molecules derived from tissue-specific mRNAs has a potential for linking cell types to donors in mixed stains. To test this hypothesis, a single base extension assay targeting the synonymous SNP marker rs857870 in the myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA) gene wa...

We report the case of four women and a man, all born in an Italian village during and immediately after WWII, that recently contacted our laboratory in order to perform kinship analysis. According to their claim, the propositi were the illegitimate offspring of a country gentleman and a peasant woman, given in adoption immediately after birth. A st...

The aim of the research was to understand if the use of chemicals compounds used to enhance latent fingerprints, might interfere with the extraction and amplification of DNA from biological samples on crime scenes. Only three methods were used: powders (black and white ones, used on non porous surfaces, and here applied on glass), cyanoacrylate (us...

Medical accounts and ancient autopsy reports imply that tertian malarial fevers caused the death of four members of the Medici family of Florence: Eleonora of Toledo (1522–1562), Cardinal Giovanni (1543–1562), don Garzia (1547–1562) and Grand Duke Francesco I (1531–1587). All members of the Medici family hunted in the endemic malarial areas of Tusc...

Hypervariable regions HV1 and HV2 of the mitochondrial DNA control region were sequenced in pre-therapy (serum) and post-therapy (saliva, hair) biological samples collected from HIV-infected patients (n=13) treated with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). Occurrence of length/point heteroplasmic mutations as a consequence of treatm...

Dropout of the amelogenin Y-specific allele due to an interstitial deletion of the Yp involving the amelogenin Y locus (AMELY) can cause misidentification of sex genotype with potentially serious consequences in personal identification processes and criminal investigations. Inclusion of additional sex-defining markers in forensic DNA typing kits is...

The continual discovery of new single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has led to an increased resolution of the Y chromosome phylogeny. Some of these Y-SNPs have shown to be restricted to small geographical regions and therefore may prove useful in the forensic field as tools for the prediction of population of origin of unknown casework samples. H...

The presence or absence of genetic heterogeneity in Sicily has long been debated. Through the analysis of the variation of Y-chromosome lineages, using the combination of haplogroups and short tandem repeats from several areas of Sicily, we show that traces of genetic flows occurred in the island, due to ancient Greek colonization and to northern A...

Typing of X-chromosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci in a deficiency paternity case revealed a single Mendelian incompatibility between a female child and her putative grandmother, consisting of an opposite homozygosity at locus DXS8378. The presence of a null allele due to a primer binding site mutation on the child's paternally inherited X chro...

The Animal Type Pig PCR Amplification kit (Biotype AG, Dresden, Germany), a multiplex PCR system that allows the simultaneous amplification of 11 tetrameric short tandem repeats (STRs) and an Amelogenin-like locus for individual identification and sexing of pig (sus scrofa), was employed in the investigation of an alleged case of veterinary malprac...

Two multiplex polymerase chain reaction systems for the automated profiling of 12 X-chromosomal short tandem repeat (STR) markers were developed. Multiplex A consisted of DXS6789, DXS6809, GATA172D05, DXS101, DXS8378, and DXS8377. Multiplex B consisted of DXS7132, DXS6800, DXS6801, DXS7424, HPRTB, and DXS10011. The set of amplified X-STRs was desig...

Over the last decade, the analysis of Y-chromosomal STRs has emerged as a powerful tool for paternity testing and forensic casework. More recently, single multiplex PCR assays including new Y-STRs, which complement those comprised in the Y Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD) minimal haplotype (minHt) and the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis...

Eight Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs)-DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385-were typed in a population sample (n=255) of unrelated Sicilian males from nine different towns on the main island and from the island of Pantelleria.

Sequence variation of the hypervariable segments (HVS) I/II of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the haplogroup affiliation were determined in a sample of 271 Italian subjects. This analysis showed that 42% of the individuals could be ascribed to H, the most frequent haplogroup in European Caucasian populations. This fraction was then screened for spec...

Twelve X-chromosomal short tandem repeat (STR) markers were typed by means of two multiplex PCR systems. Multiplex I included DXS6789, HumARA, GATA172D05, DXS101, DXS8378, and DXS8377; multiplex II comprised DXS7132, DXS6800, DXS6803, DXS7424, HPRTB, and DXS10011. Allelic frequencies for these loci were determined in a North-West Italian population...

Microscopic examination of a blood clot expelled by a physically and mentally disabled woman taken to the emergency room because of genital bleeding revealed the presence of chorionic villi encircled by decidua, hemorrhage, and necrosis. In order to identify the father of the product of conception, sections of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded abor...

Eight Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs)--DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, and DYS385--were typed in a population sample (n = 113) of unrelated males from seven different regions of Greece (Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, Central Greece, Peloponnese, Crete Island, and Chios Island).

Italians residing in Piedmont (Northwest Italy).

In this study, we evaluated the effect on DNA typing of storage of human tissue in formalin versus an alcohol-based method (Complucad®). Samples of tissue were collected at different time from fixation. DNA was isolated and, after quantitation, was amplified by quadruplex PCR including four STR loci (LPL, F13B, FESFPS and F13A01). For alcohol-fixed...

Analysis of mixed stains from forensic casework by means of standard PCR-based typing of autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) becomes difficult when the minor component is present at less than one tenth of the concentration of the major component. The human androgen receptor (HUMARA) X-chromosome inactivation assay allows to detect even a small nu...

Seven Y-STR polymorphisms (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I/II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392 and DYS393) were analyzed by means of two multiplex PCR reactions and capillary electrophoresis in a population sample of 72 unrelated Albanian males residing in Piedmont (northwest Italy) and 47 different haplotypes were observed. The combination of all seven STR systems...

Epiglottic cartilage was evaluated as an alternative source of genomic DNA from decomposed human remains to be used in forensic casework. The histological study of epiglottic cartilage samples, taken from three bodies exhumed after 6–18 months, showed the presence of a well-conserved matrix delimiting the lacunae, where residual chondrocytes could...

Eight Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs), DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385, were typed in a population sample (n=101) of first-generation Albanian immigrants living in Italy.

In recent years Italy experienced a strong migration flow from Albania: a STR reference database, to be used in forensic casework, was created for the Albanian population. Blood/saliva samples were obtained from 100 unrelated Albanians residing in Piedmont (North West Italy). Genomic DNA was isolated from blood by the Chelex method (1) and from sal...

Allele and genotype frequencies for five PCR-based DNA markers (LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8 and GC) were determined in 100 unrelated individuals from Piedmont (Northwest Italy). All five Ioci met Hardy-Weinberg expectations in the sampled population. The combined PD and CE were, respectively, 0.995 and 0.697. Frequencies obtained were compared with othe...

DNA from epidermal cells attached to the adhesive tape of stubs employed to collect and identify gunshot residue (GSR) with scanning electron microscope (SEM) was extracted, amplified with PCR and typed. The method allowed identification of specimens when attribution to a definite person was uncertain. These results also suggest that adhesive tape...

The analysis of DNA polymorphisms by means of PCR (Erlich H.A., 1989; Innis M.A. et al., 1990) has drastically increased the possibility of using some evidence that was not suitable until a short while ago.

Adhesive tapes are commonly used by Police Forces to collect Gun Shot Residues (GSR). In a previous experiment (Torre C. and Gino S., submitted to J. Forensic Sci.) it was observed that enough DNA can be extracted, amplified and typed for the HLA-DQa locus (Saiki et al., 1986), in order to attribute with certainty a GSR stub and/or to obtain sample...