Menstrual effluent has the potential to act as a versatile biospecimen allowing for longitudinal studies providing chemical snapshots of multiple hours, with a non-invasive sampling method that can be done from home. Half of the menstrual effluent is blood, apart from this it consists of vaginal fluids, epithelia, enzymes and tissue from multiple origin of the abdomen. Sampling menstrual effluent from 20 women for 3 cycle days during 3 menstrual cycles and a venous blood sample at each period, we will characterize the metabolome using H-NMR. An explorative and comprehensive data analysis is examining both natural variance, lifestyle parameters, day-to-day and period-to-period differences and correlations with venous blood metabolome.
This interesting project is run by Isabella France Jarsmer Mathiesen in collaboration with Morten Arendt Rasmussen, Bekzod Khakimov and Ole Mogensen.