{"id":18392,"date":"2026-05-23T00:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/could-the-secret-to-diagnosing-endometriosis-be-hiding-in-plain-sight-national-geographic\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T00:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:18:10","slug":"could-the-secret-to-diagnosing-endometriosis-be-hiding-in-plain-sight-national-geographic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/could-the-secret-to-diagnosing-endometriosis-be-hiding-in-plain-sight-national-geographic\/","title":{"rendered":"Could the secret to diagnosing endometriosis be hiding in plain sight? – National Geographic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although menstrual blood is typically discarded, researchers are beginning to use it to reveal new clues about women\u2019s health.<\/span>
For those who experience menstruation, period blood is something that\u2019s often discarded without a second thought. But what if it held just as much value as urine, cervical, and other blood samples that are used to examine uterine health?
\u201cThe uterus is kind of like one of the last frontiers to be investigated on a really thorough level,\u201d says Christine Metz, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, as well as molecular medicine, at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health in New York state.
Metz and other researchers are currently exploring the potentials of period blood. This substance\u2014medically referred to as \u201ceffluent\u201d and consisting of a combination of some blood, but also uterine tissue, immune cells, mucus, proteins, and signaling molecules\u2014reflects what is happening inside the uterus during the menstrual cycle and carries a rich set of biological information, says Dipanjan Pan, professor in nanomedicine at The Pennsylvania State University.
Research in this space has picked up over the last decade or so, with a 2024 study<\/a> in The Annals of Medicine & Surgery<\/i> suggesting the blood can be a valuable source of health information\u2014and has the potential to "revolutionize healthcare\u201d for those who menstruate. Although there is potential for period blood to help with monitoring mechanisms like blood sugar and vitamin deficiencies as well as tracking immune and inflammatory health and screening for other gynecological diseases and sexually transmitted infections such as HPV, the most promising work may be for diagnosing endometriosis.
(Science is finally confirming the most mysterious symptoms of endometriosis<\/i><\/a>.)
Metz has been working with period blood through the Research OutSmarts Endometriosis (ROSE) study<\/a> she co-launched in 2013 to better understand endometriosis and work toward developing a non-invasive diagnostic tool. Endometriosis\u2014which affects<\/a> an estimated 10 percent, or 190 million, of reproductive-age women worldwide\u2014is typically diagnosed with an endometrial biopsy via surgery under general anesthesia, which is about 70 percent accurate and sometimes requires two or three surgeries before a diagnosis can be made. But period blood, Metz says, has the potential to act as a \u201cnatural biopsy\u201d\u2014once more research has been conducted, of course.
Research<\/a> by Metz and her team, published in BMC Medicine <\/i>in 2022, demonstrates clear differences in the menstrual blood of people with endometriosis versus those without by using single cell RNA sequencing analysis of the endometrial tissue. \u201cIf you combine that with clinical information about the patient's symptoms, we think we have a very good handle on diagnosing endometriosis,\u201d she says.
It\u2019s also easier to obtain a control sample from a healthy individual via period blood as opposed to a surgery. This way, \u201cyou can really do population-based research because people can collect [the sample] at home,\u201d she says.
(PCOS has a new name. Here\u2019s why doctors say it matters<\/i><\/a>.)
What\u2019s more, it can take between four and 12 years to receive an endo diagnosis, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>. This is because there is no standard protocol for diagnostic surgery for endometriosis. Surgeons \u201cdon't have to take images to prove that there wasn't anything there and they looked in every single spot,\u201d Metz says, so they can often miss microscopic lesions.
Other reasons for the lag in diagnosis can be because the lesions in teens and young adults are too early to spot and diagnose with this method, that people want to avoid invasive surgery for a definitive diagnosis, and that women\u2019s pain is often dismissed.
But people in the ROSE study may get diagnosed in the same year their symptoms start, Metz says.
She imagines a future in which patients would get a kit in the mail to send in samples that they collect at home. From there, the team could begin studying better treatment options. \u201cWe've never had a clinical trial in women to find out whether hormone treatments do indeed stop progression of [endometriosis] because we've never had a platform for early diagnosis,\u201d she says.
It\u2019s possible that menstrual blood could also be used to diagnose other conditions, such as adenomyosis, the equivalent of endometriosis of the uterus itself; chronic endometritis, or inflammation of the endometrial lining; uterine fibroids, and other forms of infertility, Metz says.\u00a0
In the cases of adenomyosis and endometritis, period blood could contain cells from the uterine lining that are pathologically different than blood from our veins and could be identified using single cell RNA sequencing or other approaches.
The current diagnostic methods, primarily biopsy, for endometritis are \u201cfraught with diagnostic issues,\u201d Metz says, including that the small part of the uterus that is typically biopsied may not be infected. \u201cWe currently have preliminary data in patients with chronic endometritis supporting the fact that we could identify some of these unique markers in the tissues that we obtain [in period blood].\u201d
Additionally, period blood could help with monitoring immune and inflammatory health. \u201cUnlike circulating blood, menstrual effluent contains not just blood, but also endometrial tissue, immune cells, and local inflammatory mediators,\u201d says Pan. \u201cIn many ways, menstrual effluent provides a localized, high-resolution snapshot of immune and inflammatory activity, something peripheral blood often dilutes or misses.\u201d
(The menstrual cycle can reshape your brain<\/i><\/a>.)
The opportunity, he says, is to use this as a non-invasive window into reproductive and even systemic immune health. Although more research is needed, one day women might be able to see if their immune defenses are down and are perhaps more susceptible to\u2014or already have\u2014an illness or infection, he says.
This may also explain why period blood could help diagnose STIs such as HPV, which could ultimately lead to pre-cancerous lesions and cervical cancer, per a 2024 study<\/a> in Diagnostics<\/i>. A more recent 2026 study<\/a> in the BMJ<\/i> found that mini pad collection of period blood is a comparable diagnostic to clinician collected cervical samples for HPV testing.
There\u2019s also the potential to leverage the fluid to understand a patient\u2019s environmental exposures, such as to microplastics, air pollution, and forever chemicals. In one study<\/a> published in 2022 in Science of the Total Environment, <\/i>Metz and co-authors found that chemical exposures linked to reproductive toxicity and endocrine disruption were present in menstrual blood. Since the substance is flushed out each month, it provided researchers a unique way to study these exposures.
Though the new research and products are promising, it doesn\u2019t come without challenges. For one, Bethany Samuelson Bannow, director of classical hematology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, says that it\u2019s hard to study certain aspects of period blood if it\u2019s been sitting in a menstrual cup and therefore not \u201cfresh.\u201d Many are also not comfortable using an insertion product like a menstrual cup.
Another hurdle is that menstrual fluid varies significantly from person to person and even from cycle to cycle, Pan says. \u201cHormones, age, medications, and underlying health conditions can all influence the composition of the sample, making it harder to identify consistent biomarkers.\u201d
Innovations like \u201csmart\u201d pads that collect the samples and analyze them in real time may help solve some of these problems. Additionally, when the sample sits in a menstrual cup for hours, Samuelson Bannow says, the process of clotting and clot breakdown can continue, leading to an increase in its breakdown. This leaves the substance unusable for research purposes.
Pan believes that in the next five to 10 years, there may be readily available at-home or point-of-care tests leveraging period blood for endometriosis as well as for STIs like HPV. \u201cI anticipate that many direct-to-consumer technologies will emerge, giving women the opportunity to test earlier, gain insights sooner, and ultimately make more informed decisions about their health,\u201d he says.
As for Metz, she says that even though some of the innovations being tested aren\u2019t ready for prime time, there are \u201cgreat strides\u201d being made\u2014including awareness around the fact that period blood isn\u2019t just a waste product. \u201cWhen I talk to people, they're so excited that it could be useful,\u201d Metz says. \u201cMenstrual blood is just really a treasure trove of information.\u201d
Copyright \u00a9 1996-2015 National Geographic Society<\/span>Copyright \u00a9 2015-2026 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved<\/span><\/p>\n

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Although menstrual blood is typically discarded, researchers are beginning to use it to reveal new clues about women\u2019s health.For those who experience menstruation, period blood is something that\u2019s often discarded without a second thought. But what if it held just as much value as urine, cervical, and other blood samples that are used to examine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}