A study by Professor Hu Zheng's team from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, in collaboration with Professor Tian Xun's team from the Central Hospital of Wuhan, was published in the medical journal The BMJ.

The research, Testing menstrual blood for human papillomavirus during cervical cancer screening in China: cross-sectional populationbased study, introduces an innovative approach to cervical cancer screening using self-collected menstrual blood samples.

The study confirms the accuracy and feasibility of using menstrual blood for HPV testing, presenting a completely non-invasive and privacy-friendly cervical cancer screening method.

As a complication caused by persistent high-risk HPV infections, early screening is crucial for reducing both incidence and mortality rates. According to a 2022 report by The Lancet Global Health, cervical cancer screening coverage among eligible women in China remains below 33 percent, far from the national target of 70 percent.

Traditional doctor-collected samples are limited by uneven healthcare resource distribution and by psychological or cultural barriers to invasive procedures, which together hinder the widespread adoption of cervical cancer screening.

To address this, the team developed an overlapping capture probe set covering the entire genomes of 14 high-risk HPV types, significantly improving the capture efficiency of low-quality samples.

The team also developed a standardized "Minipad" menstrual blood collection device for HPV testing and conducted a large-scale cross-sectional study. The results confirmed the reliability and superiority of this method in clinical screening, increasing participants' willingness to undergo testing due to its noninvasive nature and alignment with the physiological cycle.

This research shows that standardized HPV testing using menstrual blood can achieve diagnostic efficacy comparable to that of physician-collected samples. This solution helps overcome traditional screening barriers related to patient compliance and limited resources, providing robust scientific evidence and a novel strategy, grounded in data from the Chinese population, to support the WHO’s global initiative to eliminate cervical cancer.