For as long as there’s been the study of science, virtually no one has bothered to pay attention to period blood. This is in large part thanks to thousands of years of sexism, namely the belief that menstrual effluent is dirty or dangerous, something to be shunned or ignored. That’s finally changing, however slowly:
“Period blood is the most overlooked opportunity in medical research,” Qvin co-founder Dr. Sara Naseri likes to say. Collecting it is noninvasive. And data hidden in its cells might help scientists crack the code to some of the most cryptic reproductive ailments.
One of those is endometriosis, wherein tissue resembling the type that lines the uterus invades areas outside the womb. Given its complexity, frequent painfulness, mysterious etiology, and lack of a cure, the disease is a research white whale. Dr. Christine Metz, a professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health who co-directs a prominent endometriosis study, says she was shocked a decade ago when she realized menstrual effluent—which contains cells shed from the uterine lining—had rarely been considered as a window into a woman’s reproductive organs. It’s like “a biopsy of the endometrium,” she says.
Other researchers are examining period blood’s potential to treat diseases. The uterus is an incredible organ for many reasons, chief among them is that it repairs itself—without scarring—after shedding its tissue every month or so during a person’s reproductive years. It does this with the help of stem cells, some of which are present in menstrual effluent. There have recently been clinical trials testing the use of these stem cells for conditions such as infertility and severe COVID, and studies showed they helped with wound healing and stimulating insulin production in diabetic lab mice.
Even so, scientists studying menstrual blood say they have been met with a reluctance rooted in cultural taboos about menstruation. The queasiness continues to hamper research, obscuring discoveries that—considering every single day, hundreds of millions of people worldwide are menstruating—may be hiding in plain sight.
In 2014, when Naseri began to explore the possibility of using periods to diagnose disease, she approached the lab director at a high-ranking university hospital and asked if she could run some experiments. He refused. Naseri’s research partner, Stanford OB-GYN professor emeritus Dr. Paul Blumenthal, offered to spin the blood down, separating the serum from the red blood cells that give the substance its intense color. But the lab director still wouldn’t budge. “No, no, no, that can’t happen,” Blumenthal recalls him saying. “I’m not letting you put that skanky stuff in my machine.”
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