快猫短视频

Menstrual cups stop leaks as well as other options such as tampons and sanitary napkins and are just as safe, according to a review of research that has looked into how women and girls use the various types of menstrual cups on the market.

Anna Maria van Eijk at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK and her colleagues analysed data from 43 studies and conference reports that included more than 3300 participants from 15 low and middle-income countries and 28 high-income countries.

Menstrual cups collect blood, rather than absorbing it like pads or tampons, and must be emptied every four to 12 hours. Van Eijk and her team found that four studies compared leakage with disposable menstrual products. In three of these, leakage was found to be similar regardless of which sanitary product was used. In the fourth study, menstrual cups were found to leak significantly less.

Among women and girls from Africa, Europe and North America, there was no increased risk of infection due to using menstrual cups, and in four studies involving 507 women, there was no association between their use and adverse effects on the microbiome of the vagina. A study in Kenya detected lower levels of disrupted vaginal bacteria in users of a menstrual cup than in those who used sanitary pads.

Menstrual cups come in two types: a bell-shaped vaginal cup and a cervical cup that sits in a similar place to a contraceptive diaphragm. In studies that examined the vagina and cervix, no tissue damage was identified as resulting from the use of a menstrual cup.

鈥淒ifficulty with removal that required professional assistance 鈥� an adverse event we did not anticipate 鈥� was reported 47 times for cervical cups鈥� and twice for vaginal cups,鈥� write the authors in their report. Results from 13 of the studies suggest that around 70 per cent of women would continue using menstrual cups once they had become familiar with them.

The researchers also calculated the cost savings for users of menstrual cups, which are designed to last 10 years. They found 199 brands of cup available in 99 countries, ranging in price from 拢0.58 to 拢37.32, and estimated that using a cup could cost roughly 5 to 7 per cent the cost of using 12 pads or tampons per period.

They estimate that a menstrual cup would create 0.4 per cent the plastic waste of single-use pads or 6 per cent of tampons, although they didn鈥檛 account for waste created during the production process.