[The forensic medical characteristic of the age based on the results of the comprehensive examination of the thyroid cartilage].

The objective of the present study was the development of the diagnostic model for determining the human age based on the results of the comprehensive examination of the 230 thyroid cartilages (TC) obtained from the corpses of men and women of different age. TC were examined with the use of the anthropometric, X-ray, and histological methods. The anthropometric investigations confirmed the gender-related differences in the structure of human TC. Various characteristics of TC were shown to correlate with the age but these relationships were rather weak even if formally significant. The X-ray studies of TC have revealed the significant correlation of the relative amount of the bone tissue on the images with the age (r=0.8). Of the 27 parameters subjected to the morphometric evaluation, the following ones were shown to significantly correlates with the age: percentage of the bony (r=0,82) and cartilaginous (r=-0.8) tissue areas, average density of the adipose (r=0.76) and reticular (r=0.7) tissues, the maximum length of trabeculae (r=0.67), the width of the mature cartilage zone (r=0.54), the cortical plate thickness (r=0.5), and the mean number of immature chondrocytes in the field of vision (r=0.5). The comprehensive investigation into the structure of the human thyroid cartilage provided a basis for the development of the method for determining the human age with the use of the linear regression equations. It is concluded that the proposed method can be employed as an additional diagnostic tool for determining the human age for the purposes of forensic medical expertise and personality identification.