Could your period blood substitute for a lab draw?????

This week, I was reading about a very interesting test which has been developed to identify early markers of pre-diabetes... through a woman's menstrual pad.

I'm going to link to the article directly, but the quick summary is this:

• Back in 2019, Dr. Sara Naseri conducted a study which proved that menstrual effluent (the technical term for period flow, which is a mix of blood, cells, and tissue) contained the necessary information to identify several key biomarkers which are often tested with lab draws.
• The FDA has just approved her tests as "diagnostic" for testing A1C levels, which is a sort of historical blood marker that can tell us about blood sugar trends. A higher A1C means that you might be showing early signs of diabetes, or be at risk for developing diabetes.
• Dr. Naseri has more tests coming down the line, including reproductive hormone tests, c-reactive protein (a marker for inflammation), thyroid hormones, AND certain immunity markers.
• Because menstrual effluent contains blood and tissue, assessing it for diagnostic purposes could potentially be BETTER than blood draws since it contains more biomarker information.

This article came to my attention partly because I have a daughter with Type 1 Diabetes-- it was a complete surprise to our family, since no one else has this condition. My first thought was, "Oh, that's nice, but you don't even need a big needle to do an A1C test. You can get that with a finger prick easily enough."

But consider this: kids don't get standard bloodwork done like adults do. And even if they do have bloodwork, it doesn't always include A1C. So a fourteen-year-old girl may not have any clue that her A1C has reached a pre-diabetic range and therefore she's unaware that she might need to take additional steps to manage her blood sugars so she doesn't develop Type 2 Diabetes. Could menstrual effluent testing be the key to early prevention of T2D in teenage girls?

In the case of T1D (which is very different, and can't be reversed with diet), early notification of elevated A1C levels might not actually prevent anything. But they could alert parents and teens to the need for investigation with a doctor, avoiding the very scary and critical condition of Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) which was how we found out our daughter had the disease.

Now-- maybe there's no need to test menstrual effluent. Maybe this is just a wake-up call for more routine testing. But I also think a lot of parents would agree that avoiding needle pricks as much as possible would be FABULOUS. And with the burgeoning potential for additional information from menstrual effluent that even blood draws can't get... I am really really intrigued to see where this research might lead!

All this just makes me appreciate and think about the fact that our bodies can "communicate" so much to us, if we learn how to "read" them! Imagine what women's healthcare could look like if it didn't take 13 years to get an endometriosis diagnosis: all you needed was to wear a special collection pad for a couple of menstrual cycles.

Definitely check out the article! And don't miss the link to the German Cycle-Check test, a product aimed at "closing the gender data gap."