Brave New World
Apr 29th, 2008 at 6:48 am by Susie
TOKYO (AFP) - The monthly discomfort many women see as a curse could pay off someday as Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage.
Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of cell that can act like stem cells.
Some 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue.
The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2-0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University’s school of medicine, who is involved in the research.
So we won’t have to be barefoot and pregnant to be good any more?
Too, too many questions are popping into my head right now.
Oh sure - find something other than the occasional baby that it’s good for … right after I hit menopause.
I have to wonder who was fiddling around with menstrual blood –and why? And where did s/he get her/his samples?
At least we now know that menstruation can be both a curse… and a gift!