Ovarian Weight and Uterine Volume Index Are Useful for Age Estimation in Adult Women

Abstract

Practically, when only parts of an unidentified human body are found, age estimation with limited materials is required. The purpose of this study was to investigate methods for estimating age using the uterus and ovaries. Among forensic autopsies performed between January 2011 and March 2022, 211 uteruses and 521 ovaries of 322 women were used for this study. Measured values for ovarian weight and uterine volume index were corrected by body surface area to consider the effect of body size. The corrected uterine volume index increased in teenage years and achieved its maximum in the 40–49 group, then gradually decreased with increasing age. The corrected ovarian weight increased until the twenties, after which it decreased with age. For women aged 20 years or more, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis suggested that a uterine volume index of 41.2 cm3/m2 was the cutoff value for classifying the age as ≥60 years or 2 and 1.92 g/m2 were the cutoff values for classifying the age as ≥40 years or <40 years, or ≥50 years or <50 years, with AUC values of 0.935 and 0.930, respectively. These methods can help determine an unknown individual’s age group simply and quickly, even for incomplete cadavers.

Keywords

• age estimation
• forensic autopsy
• uterus
• ovary
• morphology