Fascinating article about developing breakthroughs in analyzing menstrual blood for various biomarkers that could simplify and accelerate a number of diagnostic procedures, and the challenges of getting the traditional medical establishment to take the idea seriously.
(Wasn’t paywalled for me. Ymmv.)
Frustrating how far down the priority list “female troubles” continue to be for the male-dominated medical industry.
One practical issue I can see is that you’d have limited ability to schedule a collection and analysis in advance, and most tests would probably either need to be done within a day or so, or require some sort of preparation/preservation. Maybe you can get away with just refrigerating it, but who wants to keep used tampons in their fridge until you have a chance to drop it off at the lab?
Many folks keep far nastier specimens in their fridges u til delivering to the lab.
Nevermind
I think it could hold much potential, and quite honestly, why wasn’t it thought of before?
I’m pretty sure someone must have thought about it.
It wasn’t taken seriously by certain PTB as a avenue to do research on.
The memo’s here. Women’s health is important to the state of humanity.
I gather from this you didn’t read the article. There’s a testing outfit angling to advance the field, and they deal with this by providing the woman with a kit which she uses to seal and preserve the sample for return to the company by mail. So, yeah, they’re past this and are now into the phase where they’re trying to convince the stubbornly conservative medical field of the value of the data.
And this is reflective of another theme of the article, which is that there’s an “ick” factor to be overcome. It’s just another bodily fluid, and as it turns out an informationally rich one just waiting to be investigated; but for irrational cultural reasons we recoil from it. The article mentions that a number of labs refused to work with the testing startup because they didn’t want menstrual blood polluting their equipment.
Which is why I thought the article was worth sharing and is worth reading. If we can all just collectively get over ourselves and our hangups, there are new and valuable territories in science yet to be explored.
OK, I was referring to the attitudes of the general public. I don’t have much hope of convincing the population at large that menstruation isn’t icky. But laboratories!? They already have procedures for dealing with things that you don’t want contaminating food or whatever, and if needed, they have autoclaves available. And they should be staffed by more reasonable people. “Ick” should never have been a factor for a laboratory, for any bodily fluid.
Given that in at least two countries I know of there have been regular procedures for inviting ordinary people en masse to take and return (securely) faecal smear samples, it shouldn’t be an impossible thing to organise
Menstrual derived stem cells (MenSCs) research has been ongoing for some years. Also of interest is the human placenta project.
Following
Very interesting. Considering how much money is lost due to menstrual-related absenteeism, being able to develop better treatment is a game changer.
My migraines were closely related to my menstrual cycle. I’d have loved to have seen this research being done decades ago, but back then they barely studied women’s migraines at all. For years, I thought what I had couldn’t be actual migraines because I never had the aura effect. Turns out auras are most common among men who get migraines (who get migraines at a much lower rate than women). It’s not unusual at all, in fact, common to not get auras.
Not able to read the article (I guess I’ve outspent my New Yorker gratitude for the year) but I want to mention that I took part in a menstrual products study some years ago. The study included me tracking dates and times in a notebook, and preserving my used products by putting them in a bag and then in my fridge (or freezer maybe, I forget).
It really is NO big deal. Anyone who uses menstrual products already has to handle them in some fashion before discarding them. Whether you wrap them in toilet paper and place them in a bin, put them in a little paper bag in a public restroom, or pop them in a clear plastic baggie and then in a solid bag in your fridge there really is no difference.
To me, menstrual cups are the highest level of getting intimate with your menstrual blood and yet people rave about how they love using them (not me). So people who menstruate are, on average, comfortable with handling their soiled products.
If people were told they could get answers about how their periods effect their bodies and perhaps find remedies to the pain and suffering they experience, I guarantee there will be plenty of people willing to participate.
And, mail them. 
Blood is of no consequence. Or shouldn’t be, to a Laboratory.
Heck they handle terrible tissues from the dead. Maybe even maggots.
Poop.
Phlegm.
Snot.
Hair.
Finger nails.
Why is there such a stigma applied to menstrual blood?