The types of test materials required for paternity testing are diverse, with conventional test materials including: oral mucosa, blood, blood spots, and hair with hair follicles. Special test materials include semen, semen spot, toothbrush, fetal villi, fetal amniotic fluid, flow products, tissue, umbilical cord blood, etc.

An oral swab is a single-ended medical swab also known as a cotton swab that collects oral mucosal epithelial cells by wiping the mouth.

Compared to blood sampling, oral swabs are easy and non-invasive and painless.

The DNA identification results are identical because a person's DNA is the same whether it comes from oral cells or white blood cells, and there is no difference in the identification results because of the different test materials used.

So when doing paternity testing, what is the case with oral swabs and what is the case with blood traces?

First, if you sample yourself or your child, it is recommended that you prefer a non-invasive oral swab as the sample.

If your child is under 5 years old, you can use oral swabs or blood traces as the test sample. It is better not to collect hair because the child is still small, the hair is fine and sparse, so the amount of DNA contained in the hair is less.

Third, if within the last two years you have been transfused for reasons such as injury or illness, or have had a bone marrow transplant, you are advised to inform the identification center, they will advise you to choose other samples, such as oral swabs for paternity testing, because at this time your blood contains the components of others, which will affect the identification conclusions.

Which is better, oral swabs for paternity testing or blood traces results? Paternity testing by collecting oral swabs is a non-invasive sample collection method. Thousands of oral epithelial cells are shed in the mouth every day, and these cells contain DNA that can be used for paternity testing, and analyzing oral epithelial cells has the same precision and accuracy as analyzing blood cells, and other human tissues.