经血会是女性健康检测的突破口吗？研究仍在验证阶段

BLOODY GOOD SCIENCE

Something we throw away every month could actually hold the key to curing endometriosis, infertility, and more.

October 30, 2026

Every month nearly two billion people around the world menstruate, with about six tablespoons of menstrual blood leaving each person’s body over the course of three to seven days. And we throw it all away. What a growing number of researchers believe is that those discarded tampons and pads contain precious information. Menstrual blood—or effluent, as it’s referred to in medical literature—contains unique information about our health that no other bodily fluid can share.

In addition to blood, effluent contains lining of the uterus and secretions from the vagina and cervix, along with stem cells. Studies have found that menstrual blood has over 1,000 distinct proteins, 385 of which are not found in any other blood. “There’s a whole host of potentially really important information about the health of the uterus itself and also our body’s broader health and wellbeing,” says Gemma Sharp, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Exeter in England and director of the Menarche Menstruation Menopause and Mental Health Consortium. Sharp is part of a team of researchers building a large menstrual fluid biobank as part of a wider program trying to identify the causes of and better treatments for heavy menstrual bleeding.

Sharp’s ambition to work in menstrual health was driven largely by the fact that it’s been overlooked in research, clinical practice, and by society for so long. “I was really interested to find out why that is,” says Sharp. “There’s just this huge clinical gap because we haven’t been doing this type of research before.” Part of that is simply due to health care’s male-centric baseline. Women were frequently excluded from clinical trials done before 1993 (when the National Institute of Health’s Revitalization Act mandated their inclusion in future federally-funded studies) so how treatments, medications, and diseases impact women writ large has only been studied for just over three decades. Which means there’s a lot of catching up to do.

Another hurdle for menstrual research specifically is the lack of education around menstruation, even among doctors. Ridhi Tariyal is the co-founder of NextGen Jane, an Oakland-based women’s health care and biotech company that has been collecting health information via mailed-in, menstrual-blood soaked tampons. When she was first pitching her idea to a male oncologist, she quickly realized that she would also have to explain the nuances of menstruation. “The oncologist was really excited about the idea and said, ‘OK, so you’re going to use the tampon that a woman puts in her body at the beginning of her period and takes out at the end and sequence it,’” says Tariyal. “I remember replying flatly, ‘actually, there’s not just one tampon during a period, we change it every few hours.’ And he was like, ‘really?’ This was a great doctor and a smart scientist, but neither his lived experience nor his medical school training gave him any knowledge about the menstrual regimen.”

Finally, there’s the ick factor. Our collective belief that menstrual blood is somehow grosser than other blood is deeply entrenched. “It has always had a social stigma,” says Christine Metz, PhD, the head of medicinal biochemistry and a professor at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. “I don’t know of any culture other than the indigenous population that embraces menstrual blood. Everyone else says, ‘we don’t talk about that stuff.’”

As anyone who has walked to a public restroom with a tampon tucked into their shirt sleeve knows, periods are often shrouded in shame. The “curse of blood,” as Carrie’s religious fanatic mother calls it in the 1976 film (that just got a reboot on Amazon Prime), is painted as revolting and sinful, and eventually, come prom night, leads to rage and destruction; exaggerated for maximum horror movie shock value but also, frankly, relatable. Less than a decade after Carrie’s blood-soaked prom, the word period would be uttered for the first time on TV in a Tampax commercial (set in a high school locker room) by a pre-Monica-fame Courtney Cox. Then it trickled into the occasional television and movie plotline, most often as a marker of the shift away from childhood—Rudy and Darlene got theirs on The Cosby Show and Roseanne, and Vada in My Girl, has to be convinced she’s not hemorrhaging to death—and sometimes, regrettably, as a gross-out vehicle (see Superbad).

Period portrayals have come a long way in recent years, from Broad City’s period pants to Turning Red’s metaphorical red panda. Period products have evolved dramatically too (there’s underwear and cups and cycle support from brands like The Period Company, Thinx, Looni ,and Cora) and so has our cultural perception—a few decades ago, the notion of free bleeding the London marathon would have been unfathomable. While the stigma has not entirely disappeared, and there remain huge gaps in menstrual education and period poverty worldwide, we may be more ready than ever to unlock menstrual blood as a key to women’s health. Metz always saw it as an amazing tool and biological specimen that had just been completely ignored. “We study spit, we study poop, we study urine,” she says. “Nobody’s studying menstrual blood.”

The Crime Scene Origins of Period Blood Research

Right now there are two groups talking a lot about menstrual blood: Scientists eager to understand health conditions that exclusively or disproportionately impact women, and fem-tech start-ups eager to capitalize on a potential new diagnostic tool. The first person to stumble upon that potential wasn’t working in women’s health, but crime scene investigations: a forensic scientist named Donald Siegel who was employed at the time by New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Back in 2012, scientists in that office were trying to find a way to disprove “the menstrual blood defense.” “People would claim it was not blood, but menstrual blood at a crime scene,” says Tariyal. As in, “The blood stains all over my apartment aren’t from a violent crime, just free bleeding”—it’s a defense that comes up more than you might think. Those early studies were trying to find a way to differentiate menstrual from systemic blood samples.

Once the difference (those aforementioned hundreds of unique proteins) was established by Siegel and his fellow researchers, scientists began to zero in on what else menstrual blood could reveal. “The next question became, is there anything you could pick up in whole blood, with normal lab tests, that you could more conveniently pick up in menstrual blood,” says Tariyal. The earliest answer to that was hemoglobin A1C, which is used to track diabetes. Typically, a patient with diabetes has to have their blood tested twice a year (four times if the disease is not stable or being actively managed), either by venous blood draw or at-home fingerstick tests.

Qvin, a California-based health tech company founded in 2014 by Dr. Sara Naseri and Soren Therkelsen, was the first to capitalize on menstrual blood as a diagnostic tool, commercializing a pad (called a Q-pad) with a removable collection strip that could be mailed in for evaluation. Their Q-pad received FDA approval in 2024 to measure and monitor hemoglobin A1C levels using menstrual blood to track blood sugar in those with diabetes or prediabetes.

While Qvin demonstrated what was possible with menstrual blood, they didn’t necessarily address an acute pain point or make anything more convenient. (A finger prick at home is arguably less hassle than putting your bloody menstrual pad in the mailbox.) Creating a different way to gather health information, while interesting, isn’t exactly electrifying science, says Tariyal. What may be more compelling, though, is HPV testing using menstrual blood; currently, testing requires an in-person evaluation with a speculum which many are uncomfortable with. Qvin has now pivoted to HPV and their diagnostic pads for that disease have already received approval from Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration.

Much of the current wave of research focuses on what menstrual blood can tell us about our reproductive organs and the conditions specific to that area of the body. “Menstrual blood is distinct in that it’s a proxy for the endometrium, the innermost lining of the uterus, so we get insights into the uterus itself,” says Irma Vlasac, a researcher in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, adding that some research has shown that there are even immune cells specific to the uterus. “In conditions such as endometriosis and reproductive tract cancers, menstrual effluent may help us gain better insights than traditional blood samples.”

Inflammation, which plays a significant role in a number of gynecological ailments, is something that Metz has focused on for her entire career. In the mid-’90s, interested in how the cells that line the blood vessels of the endometrium and myometrium respond to inflammation, she would have to go over to labor and delivery to get umbilical cords. Then she thought of menstrual blood. Because it has unique biomarkers (like urocortin 3, a protein involved in inflammation), creating a bank of samples has given Metz’s team a singular lens into what’s happening in the uterus—and potentially an invaluable diagnostic tool.

How Period Blood Could Transform Endometriosis Diagnoses

For Xella Health co-founder and CEO Kelly Lacob, whose background is in health tech and diagnostics, menstrual blood’s diagnostic value was top of mind when approaching her new venture, which she describes as “precision health care” and “concierge care delivery” for women. In other words, it’s a private telehealth company that uses patients’ lab results to recommend treatment plans for a wide range of conditions (cancer, cardiovascular disease, B12 deficiency) and life stages (trying to get pregnant, navigating perimenopause). Xella costs $499 per year for a standard membership or $949 if you want more management of active conditions. Right now, the company is still relying on venous blood draws, so subscribers need to go to a local lab, like Quest Diagnostics, for testing. But soon, Xella’s data gathering will extend into menstrual blood, using a swab-based collection method instead of a pad or tampon; this will be an add-on option to the traditional blood draw. Lacob sees distinct advantages to using menstrual fluid to look at conditions of the reproductive health system. “Whenever you’re trying to look at a particular system, the closer you get to the source, you’re going to see things sooner and in higher concentrations, and the higher quality your data’s going to be,” says Lacob, outlining a theory that researchers in the menstrual science space agree on.

The first condition that Xella is pouring their efforts into testing menstrual fluid for is endometriosis. Endometriosis is a debilitating condition—painful periods, cramping, fatigue and fertility challenges are common—that impacts more than 6 million women in the US, but there’s no test for it and it’s often misdiagnosed for years (research has found that women sometimes wait decades for a diagnosis). Right now, the only medically accepted method of diagnosing endometriosis is surgical (via a laparoscopic procedure). And even that only detects 70% of all cases, says Metz. So, the possibility of a non-invasive test is understandably huge, although there is currently no evidence that this method would be any more accurate in diagnosing the condition.

Metz embarked on the ROSE (Research Outsmarts Endometriosis) study with Peter Gregerson, MD, a geneticist and professor of molecular medicine, in 2013, creating a bank of menstrual specimens with the intention of learning more about endometriosis to improve treatment options and diagnosis time. Since then the ROSE study has enrolled almost 4,000 participants and collected and investigated menstrual blood using numerous approaches. So far, their most significant finding has been identifying cells in menstrual blood that express inflammatory biomarkers predictive of endometriosis.

The work has also helped them figure out that using silicon menstrual cups seems to be the most effective collection method for the type of diagnostic testing they are doing. “Collecting it with an absorptive product kills the tissues and cells and interferes with our processing and outcome measurements,” says Metz, adding that because they need about a teaspoon collected during peak flow, a swab wouldn’t work either. The ROSE study team received $850,000 from the National Institutes of Health earlier this year, a major endorsement of the work they’re doing and its potential.

And they are far from alone in their efforts to prove menstrual blood’s viability as a diagnostic tool. NextGenJane is developing a test via tampon that you can do at home; they’ve finished one study focused on endometriosis and are in the process of enrolling participants in a study of infertility patients. Tariyal says they have also started enrolling patients with diagnosed autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, such as lupus or hidradenitis, into other studies in progress because menstruation is an inflammatory process.

Researchers from Endogene.bio at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona are also studying diagnostic approaches for endometriosis using menstrual blood samples; teams at Eth Zurich, a renowned public research university in Switzerland, have developed a diagnostic menstrual pad that’s still in early clinical testing but will theoretically be able to record markers that can indicate cancer, endometriosis, and general inflammation; and last year saw the establishment of the Fairbairn Menstruation Science Fund at MIT, which will be devoted to using menstrual blood to diagnose endometriosis and other gynecological disorders as well as chronic systemic inflammatory diseases that more commonly impact women.

While endometriosis is a common focus for many in the menstrual blood space, both on the science and start-up side, the researchers interviewed for this piece posit that the same approach could be applied to uterine fibroids, endometrial hyperplasia, adenomyosis, PMDD, lupus, various cancers, and even fertility. Lacob already envisions their menstrual fluid data being able to reveal vital information about the ovarian environment, giving insights into not just the quantity, but the quality of eggs, a frequent blind spot in fertility care.

What We Still Don't Know About Period Blood's Power

All of this points to a promising future, but we may now be at the all-too-common point where companies eager to innovate are selling something before the evidence that it really works has been fully substantiated. And moving quickly requires some efficiency tactics. Xella's platform, for example, is powered by AI. Its bot ingests and analyzes the data from a patient's bloodwork, then makes recommendations (for follow-up testing, medications, etc), then that is all reviewed by a human physician. The use of AI in this context is concerning to some researchers in the menstrual science space because “AI is only as good as what it can train on and there is not much literature that they’re going to be able to access about menstrual blood,” says Metz. According to Xella founder Lacob, its bot has been fed female-specific clinical guidelines, published literature, and resources to be able to evaluate where there are diagnostic gaps. So it's looking for lab values that are out of range, but also bigger patterns, says Lacob, then reporting on probable risks and how confident it is about them, plus providing clinical back-up.

It’s near impossible to hear about inventive, needle-free diagnostic blood testing and not have the mind wander to Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes’s trail of junk science, but scientists who have been studying menstrual blood for years think its potential for revealing a wealth of information about our health is undeniable. And endometriosis is just the beginning. Menstrual fluid, and the stem cells floating around it, have more than just diagnostic potential. And for more than just women. “Menstruation is a model system for understanding how the body naturally repairs and responds to injury,” says Tariyal. Every month the uterus sheds and regenerates its lining in what is a remarkable demonstration of scarless healing. “This process inherent to female biology is fascinating in that it gives you an opportunity to observe how the body moves from injury to repair without fibrosis [excessive buildup of connective tissue],” says Tariyal. “We have just not spent enough time studying it.”

Measuring the promise of these emerging diagnostic models with well-proven science is critical, though. “I think we’re on the right track, but I feel very strongly that until these diagnostics are really solid, you can’t promise anything,” says Metz. What’s solid? Rigorous testing in large, clinical trials with strong evidence of reproducibility, accuracy, precision, and robustness. “Investors are weary as it is and if there’s something that fails, it’s going to really hurt the women’s health field as a whole,” she says. While fem-tech pioneers can successfully nudge the menstrual blood conversation farther into the mainstream, these new wave tools and tech-enabled care shouldn’t outpace the scientific research required to validate them. The benefits of fem-tech platforms, says Sharp, are the sheer numbers of people they can reach. In clinical research, there is much more rigor—but often far smaller numbers. “If we can combine those two things and get the rigor and the scale, then I actually think that the innovations will come thick and fast,” she predicts. And Metz remains very hopeful: “The market is large enough to accommodate multiple diagnostic approaches, provided they are accurate and reproducible.”

And getting that accurate, reproducible evidence takes cash. Closing the knowledge gap is only possible by addressing the research gap. In 2020 only 5% of global R&D funding was allocated to women’s health; of that number only 1% went to women-specific health conditions, including menopause, endometriosis, contraception, and maternal health, with a quarter of that 1% being restricted solely to fertility. The research gap is clearly gaping. Funneling money not just into fem-tech but into the research of scientists like Metz, Sharp, and the teams at MIT and Dartmouth is the only way to ensure that menstrual blood is no longer wasted. As Vlasac puts it: “It just holds so much untapped potential.”

Contributor Fiorella Valdesolo is a New York-based writer and editor covering beauty, style, culture, and lifestyle topics. She is a fervent believer in the power of YSL's Touche Éclat, the eternal sartorial wisdom of Stevie Nicks, and that there is little that a good meal can't cure. She joined Style.com as ... Read More

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