2023-08-28 16:00:32
Just a few days ago the first study on menstrual products made with sangre real. The news went around the world not so much because of the results of the investigation itself (which, by the way, were also shocking) but because it has not been until now, in the middle of 2023, that it has been carried out. such a study with real blood and not with a substitute like the typical blue liquid that appears in advertisements.
The first study on menstrual products made with real blood has now been published.
“The problem is that science continues to be disgusted by the rule. Menstruation has always been a taboo subject in society and this has ended moving to the labs and skewing research on the subject”, comments endocrinologist Carme Valls, one of the pioneers in the study of menstrual health.
Researchers urge to have real data to study diseases that alter the menstrual cycle, such as endometriosis
There are more and more experts who, like her, denounce the lack of studies with real menstruation. Especially if we take into account that this physiological process is something that affects half of the population and that more than 800 million people live every day around the world. “It cannot be that something as fundamental as the period continues to be ignored by science. On the one hand, throughout history very few studies have been done on menstrual blood. On the other, for decades no study has been done on how menstruation it can affect different biological processes, diseases and drugs”, adds Valls, author of ‘Invisible Women for Medicine’.
“It cannot be that something as fundamental as the rule continues to be ignored by science”
He scientific contempt for menstruation It is reflected very clearly in the large repositories of medical knowledge. According to an analysis from Stanford University, before 1950 there had only been one study on menstrual blood. “In the following decades, 400 studies on menstruation were published compared to more than 10,000 on erectile dysfunction. This shows to what extent processes that affect women have been underestimated by science,” say researchers Nichole Tyson, Olga Kciuk and Paul D. Blumenthalt.
At the moment, the PubMed medical search engine collects nearly 24,000 studies on menstrual blood: a figure that pales in comparison to, for example, the more than 376,000 carried out on covid-19 in just three years.
This flagrant lack of studies has been denounced by countless science professionals, the main publishers in the sector such as ‘Science’ and ‘Nature’, and has even led a massive demonstration at the gates of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Some people propose using ‘big data’ techniques and artificial intelligence to study diseases that alter the menstrual cycle, such as endometriosis. But how? there is not enough data to do it!Hundreds of protesters chanted.
flow and bleeding
If the lack of studies on menstruation (as a biological process) is already worrying, it is even more worrying, the absence of analyzes focused on the content of menstrual blood. The first studies to understand the composition of the menstrual flow, as well as its changes throughout the cycle, were not carried out between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. At the end of this decade it was also discovered how, through the study of these fluids, iron loss could be traced in patients suffering from excessive bleeding. “Many of these works have been a true chimera, because after they were published hardly any work continued along the same lines”, comments Valls.
In the last twenty years Studies have been published in which, for example, the ability to obtain stem cells from menstrual fluids is analyzed. More recently, an analysis led by researchers Enriqueta Barranco and Nicolás Olea, from the University of Granada, has revealed how menstrual blood reflects some endocrine disruptors present in the body of women and how this, in turn, can explain the appearance of various hormonal disturbances and diseases.
Medical attention
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The lack of studies on the period and the menstrual cycle has not only affected the knowledge itself about these processes. Also has affected medical practices and to the attention of menstruating people. As explained by gynecologist Paul Blumenthal in an interview in ‘The Guardian’, the lack of rigorous analysis on the absorption capacity of different menstrual products complicates, even more, understand if a patient has abnormal bleeding or not. “If a patient tells me that she uses a pad every two hours I can’t tell if she really has excessive bleeding or not because she will depend on the brand,” she says.
“The neglect of menstrual health is especially serious in developing countries, where the period is still lived as a stigma”
“Noneo about menstrual health is especially serious in The developing countrieswhere the period is still lived as a stigma and where, in many cases, women do not even have access to hygiene products”, comments Azucena Bardaji, researcher at ISGlobal’s maternal and reproductive health program. “It is urgent to dedicate more resources to study the processes that affect women’s health and that can have a key influence on the quality of life of millions and millions of people all over the world”, adds the specialist.
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