Biomedical subjects

Mladen Marcikić

Publications and source records attributed to Mladen Marcikić.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Infanticide in Eastern Croatia.

For the layperson no crime is more difficult to comprehend than the killing of a child by his or her own parents. This is a retrospective study of neonaticide and infanticide in Eastern Croatia from 1980 to 2004. Judicial records of infanticide cases stored in Regional and County Courts were analyzed for the circumstances surrounding the offense. Twenty-four babies were discovered in various places during investigating period of time. The victims were almost equally divided between boys (12) and girls (11). The gender of one baby was unknown. The mean weight of babies was 2.7 SD = 0.66 kg. The perpetrators preferred rubbish-heaps (33.4%), burying in soil (16.7%), various premises in or around the house (16.7%) and garbage cans (12.5%) as places for hiding the dead babies. The most dominant cause of death in sixteen cases of live birth was asphyxia (37%) with equal distribution of smothering, stuffing the mouth with rags and strangulation. Other frequent causes of death were placing the child in a plastic bag and abandonment (25%), brain injury (25%) and wounding using a sharp weapon (12.5%). The cause of death for six babies remained unknown due to advanced decomposition. Two babies were stillborn. The age of accused mothers varied from 16 to 33, mean 24 SD=5.2 years. Most of them were unmarried (60%) and had limited formal education. They usually kept the pregnancy a secret (73%) and gave birth (93%) without public welfare assistance. The mother lived in the terror of shame and with the guilt that accompany conception without marriage. Fear seemed to be a pronounced motivating factor for committing infanticide. The data on court proceedings were available in fifteen cases. The mothers were officially indicted in all cases for infanticide under the Croatian Criminal Code. The perpetrator remained unidentified in nine suspicious crimes. The court convicted ten mothers of the crime of infanticide. Often juries were unwilling to punish the mother, citing the mother's lifelong guilt of having killed her child as enough punishment.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Morphological classification and sexual dimorphism of hyoid bone: new approach.

Hyoid bone is a part of viscerocranium placed between the tongue root and thyroid cartilage to which it is connected by thyrohyoid membrane. Widely accepted morphological classification does not exist. Sexual dimorphism was analysed in this study and new guidelines for anatomical classification of hyoid bones based on anthropometric parameters were given. Total number of analysed bones was 70. The bones were classified into three groups: symmetrical U-type, symmetrical V-type and asymmetrical type according to the angle between greater horns and the proportion of greater horns length. In the females incidence of asymmetrical type is considerably higher than in the males, while the incidence of symmetrical V-type is lower The angle value that is on average higher in males may be the parameter indicating that in puberty hyoid bone, still not completely ossified, to some extent follows development of thyroid cartilage because of their close anatomical relation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

How high should paternity index be for reliable identification of war victims by DNA typing?

AIM: To analyze statistically and logically the significance of genetic matches between skeletal remains and relatives of missing persons in the process of identification of war victims by DNA typing. METHODS: DNA was isolated from bone and blood samples and short tandem repeat (STR) loci were typed by using AmpFLSTR Profiler, Profiler Plus, and Identifiler kits. Novel mini-haplotype analysis that compares matches in all three-locus combinations of alleles was developed and used in the analysis of inbreeding in the group of 295 unrelated individuals. RESULTS: While comparing 98 skeletal remains exhumed in the process of identification of war victims in Croatia with over 3,000 genotypes of relatives of missing persons, we revealed 20 cases of 14-locus matches and 4 cases of 15-locus matches between unrelated people. We hypothesized that this unexpectedly high number of false matches might be a consequence of local inbreeding and supported this hypothesis with very low correlation between the probability of a genotype and the number of matching genotypes in the database (R(2) = 0.36). Further support for the hypothesis was obtained by the analysis of mini-haplotypes, which revealed up to 90% overrepresentation of some mini-haplotypes. CONCLUSIONS: STR DNA typing is the "golden standard" of human identification, but evidential value of a genetic match can be easily misinterpreted. Therefore, careful use of statistical methods is essential for the proper evaluation of laboratory results. Whenever possible, multiple relatives should be analyzed and other evidence based on the information about time, place, and other conditions of disappearance, as well as anthropological and other "classical" forensic data should always be put together and compared before any final decision about the identity is made.

Consanguinity↗

PubMed2003

Epidemiological features of suicides in Osijek County, Croatia, from 1986 to 2000.

Suicide is a devastating tragedy associated with social, cultural and psychological factors. It takes approximately 1,060 lives in the Republic of Croatia each year. We retrospectively reviewed all cases referred to in the Registrar office and Police Department at Osijek County from 1986 to 2000. The cases of suicide totaled 1,017. All of the cases were analyzed as to age, gender, marital status, occupation, place and time of suicide and method of suicide. The suicide rate for the entire population of the County averaged 20.5/100,000 inhabitants per annum. The age of the suicides ranged from 15 to 92. The male to female ratio was 2.1:1. The highest suicide incidence was among the age groups from 55 to 64 (19.27%), followed by age group from 45 to 54 (16.12%). The lowest suicide incidence was among the age group < 19 (3.4%). The incidence in the group 85 > years was also low (2.06%). The suicide was frequent among people who live alone: single, widowed, divorced (47.29%). Eighty percent of victims were found in surroundings familiar to them. These included various premises of their residences. The retired, the laborers and the unemployed (67.36%) were predominant among suicide victims. The most common methods of suicide were hanging (43%), followed by firearms (24%). No correlation was found with the day of the week or the month of the year. The study showed a slightly increased rate of suicide, from 21 cases at the beginning of the investigation (in 1986) to 22.3/100,000 population fifteen years later (in 2000).

Adolescent↗