1y ago

First (I repeat, first) test of menstrual products using actual blood published last week (I repeat, last week)

mastodon.social Bethany Black (@BethanyBlack@mastodon.social)

After all these years I’m rarely surprised by medical misogyny, but finding out that the research from the first ever tests on period products using blood instead of water were published LAST WEEK is one of those surprises.

Archive link to story here: https://archive.ph/HVNLH

Posted here because there is no community for Absolutely Infuriating (that I know of).

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Did anyone have access to the original publication and can tell me, if they explain how they determined it being the first study and what other liquids have been used before in studies? The Guardian article only says "Manufacturers have traditionally used saline or water", but that does not tell you much, as these are not scientists with independent studies and manufacturers usually do not publish their full internal testing methods.
I only have access to its abstract and curiously it does not mention it being the first published study with actual blood, so the authors themselves did not find it very noteworthy.
I can easily imagine, that a published, standardized, reproducible (model) menstrual fluid for such an analysis does not exist yet, but I am not that involved in medical publishing. If this is the case, that would be really infuriating. It might exist as some vendors sell artificial menstrual fluid.
- Red blood cell capacity of modern menstrual products: considerations for assessing heavy menstrual bleeding
  No study exists comparing the capacity of currently available menstrual hygiene products using blood.
  They don't have to explain how they know. Literature searches are standard, and done before doing research like this. Funders want to know if they're wasting their money on a question that has already been answered, and whether the proposed methods are appropriate given what has been done, and learnt, before.
  That's not to say that all literature searches are perfect. You can check on PubPeer for any howls of anguish from unacknowledged researchers. But the only legal requirement for testing is tampons due to toxic shock syndrome and its relationship to absorbency. It's really unlikely that manufacturers are doing the tests without being forced to and, if they have done any, really unlikely they would fail to publish their results if they liked the results. If they are suppressing unwelcome results, the research might as well not exist.

57 comments