A strip in a period pad found cervical precancer as often as a clinician's swab

Xun Tian and colleagues in Wuhan, China, tried another route. In Hubei province, 3,068 women aged 20 to 54 with regular cycles, from four urban and three rural communities, attached a small cotton strip on top of their usual pad when their period started. They wore it until more than two thirds was soaked, sealed it in a vial and sent it to a lab to be tested for human papillomavirus (HPV). Each woman also had a standard swab taken by a clinician.

Thirty-eight women turned out to have precancer (CIN2 or worse). The strip caught 36 of them (94.7%), the clinician's swab 35 (92.1%). The strip raised slightly more false alarms: for every 100 women without precancer, it wrongly flagged about 11, the swab 10. The authors name their own weak spots. Not everyone had a biopsy, women with clean results were simply counted as healthy, and 38 cases is a small number. The strip is still a research prototype you can't buy.

Spanish doctors asked to comment by the Science Media Centre Spain were sceptical. Marta del Pino says it shouldn't replace current screening just yet. Pluvio Coronado doubts it will catch on: screening runs to 65, and after menopause, in pregnancy and for many women with a hormonal IUD there is no period to sample. Self-collected swabs already exist. Still, the blood women are taught to hide turned out to be a sample worth reading.