2026 · Annals of medicine and surgery · open access
Beyond waste: menstrual blood as a powerful diagnostic tool for women's health
Shafiq et al.
The finding, in our words
Menstrual blood offers a noninvasive, patient-centric matrix for detecting endometriosis, cervical cancer, and hormonal disorders through self-collected samples. Wearable in-pad biosensors enabling real-time monitoring and long-term tracking could transform fertility evaluation and early disease detection, though standardisation and large-scale validation remain critical gaps.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Self-collected salivary progesterone and the ratio of estradiol to progesterone showed strong agreement with serum levels, supporting the use of saliva as a noninvasive matrix for monitoring the menstrual cycle.
In a large study using self-collected capillary blood, current vaping and smoking were independently associated with lower levels of anti-Müllerian hormone, a marker of ovarian reserve. This demonstrates the utility of decentralised capillary sampling for large-scale epidemiological research on reproductive health.
In a study of 46 perinatal nicotine users, dried blood spots and saliva were used weekly to measure reproductive hormones, finding that lower postpartum estradiol and greater peripartum declines in oxytocin were associated with increased nicotine craving and use. This demonstrates the feasibility of decentralised microsampling and remote surveys for longitudinal hormone tracking in vulnerable populations.
In female shift workers, 0.3 mg melatonin reduced climacteric symptoms by 15.8% compared with placebo and improved sleep quality on days off by 35.33%, with no shift interaction; home blood sampling enabled measurement of LH, FSH, estradiol and progesterone.
Home DBS sampling gave testosterone results that agreed well with venous blood in men on intramuscular testosterone undecanoate, but showed falsely high values in those using topical gel, likely from skin contamination. Patients preferred home collection for its convenience, suggesting DBS is viable for decentralised monitoring of injectable testosterone if patients are taught proper technique.