AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, we're going to take a few minutes now to talk about periods, as in the menstrual kind. Every month, hundreds of millions of people have their periods. It's blood that literally ends up in the trash. But, you know, it's blood that some researchers consider a treasure trove of information that has long been overlooked by science. Now, there's a small group of researchers who are collecting period blood for medical research. Maddie Oatman spent months looking into why menstrual blood has been undervalued by science and what it could do for medicine. Welcome.
MADDIE OATMAN: Thanks for having me.
CHANG: Thanks for being with us. So I know that in your reporting, one of the doctors you spoke to for this story said that period blood is, quote, "the most overlooked opportunity in medical research," which feels like a pretty bold statement, right? What are some examples of the kinds of revelations offered by blood from periods?
OATMAN: Yeah, so scientists are excited about menstrual fluid for a couple of different reasons. One, they think that they could use menstrual blood the same way they do blood drawn from veins, just to help diagnose different diseases and health conditions. But instead of having to go into a lab, a person who menstruates could be giving that blood sample just using a menstrual pad, for instance. But then, perhaps even more exciting is, you know, what menstrual fluid might tell us about really cryptic and baffling diseases like endometriosis.
CHANG: Which is a very, very painful condition.
OATMAN: Yeah, it's often debilitating. And the only way to officially diagnose it is through surgeries. So it can often take years, or up to a decade, to diagnose this. So this researcher, Dr. Christine Metz, is working with a team, and what they've found is that these endometrial cells in the menstrual fluid of people with endometriosis looks different than people who don't have it. And so what they think is very soon there will be a diagnostic test that can tell someone if they have endometriosis without needing that surgery.
CHANG: If they just turn over their used tampon or a maxi pad or something like that?
OATMAN: Yeah, that would be the idea. And researchers are also excited about, you know, communication about the immune system or inflammation happens in certain types of cells and proteins in menstrual fluid. And so they might be able to get a picture of something going on inside the uterus without needing to do laparoscopy or other types of invasive biopsies.
CHANG: Well, you know, talking about periods - it's still awkward, right? Like, there are still so many cultural and historical taboos around menstruation. Can you just talk about some of that history of stigma and how all of that has found its way into science over the decades and decades?
OATMAN: Yeah. So basically, every major religion, in some of their texts, refer to menstruation or women who are menstruating as impure or shameful or something to be avoided. And it's leaked over into science. So in the early 1920s, there was this pediatrician in the United States who helped popularize this idea of a menotoxin, which was supposedly this substance that people who are menstruating emitted that could cause asthma in children or could cause flowers to wilt.
CHANG: (Laughter) Wow.
OATMAN: And, well, there were scientists writing letters about menotoxin and submitting these letters to The Lancet, which is the most prominent scientific journal until the 1970s.
CHANG: That's incredible.
OATMAN: I also - you know, a researcher I spoke with, Dr. Sara Naseri, said that when she started looking at the clinical potential of menstrual blood, she had a colleague, who was actually studying feces, tell her that he thought what she was doing was disgusting.
CHANG: When I read that, my jaw dropped. I was like, are you kidding me? So there's this startup called Qvin that's using period blood for medical research. You spent some time at their headquarters. What are they hoping to do?
OATMAN: So Qvin has innovated a new type of pad to collect menstrual blood and then test it for different biomarkers or signals of disease. I tried the Qvin pad out. It's called the Q-Pad, and it works a lot like, you know, a normal menstrual pad would. But inside the pad there's this little paper strip, and you pull out the strip and mail it in. And Qvin's lab analyzes the blood that has been dried on that strip to help diagnose a couple types of diabetes. So far, they only have FDA clearance on the blood glucose test, but they say that they're going to be able to use this pad and this test to screen for HPV, which is responsible for 95% of cervical cancers. And right now, we get tested for that using pap smears. But to be able to passively collect that fluid and send it in could be really promising. And as well, they hope that there will be the ability to test for fertility hormones and possibly even things like endometriosis in the future.
CHANG: Maddie Oatman is a senior editor and writer at Mother Jones. Thank you so much for this reporting. It was fascinating.
OATMAN: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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