An at-home endometriosis test under development at the University of Cincinnati could spare patients years of invasive surgery and agonizing uncertainty. Katherine (Katie) Burns, a toxicologist and reproductive biologist who also lives with the disease, helped lead the work that turns menstrual fluid into a potential diagnostic sample. Early lab results suggest the approach could sharply shorten what is now a typical seven-year journey to a diagnosis.
According to Action News 5, Burns' team reports early studies showing the test is up to 95–99% accurate. Speaking to Ivanhoe about the prospect of finally having a noninvasive option, Burns said, “Finally, let’s make some changes. Let’s do something.”
How the home kit works
Burns' lab is searching for immune-system signatures, particularly white blood cells, in menstrual fluid that look different in people with endometriosis. Instead of undergoing laparoscopy, patients would collect menstrual fluid with a cup or disc at home and mail the sample to a lab for analysis. As detailed by the University of Cincinnati, researchers hope those biomarkers can eventually be read by a clinician-prescribed diagnostic kit.
Why this matters
Endometriosis affects an estimated 6.5 million women in the U.S. and often goes undiagnosed for years, with patients averaging seven to 10 years before a definitive diagnosis, the Society for Women's Health Research reports. Funding for the condition has lagged: a patient-centered research roadmap from MHQP notes NIH allocated roughly $29 million to endometriosis research in 2023. Those gaps help explain why noninvasive, widely available diagnostics have been slow to reach clinics.
Burns is working with UC’s 1819 Innovation Hub as the technology enters patenting and financing phases, and the University of Cincinnati says clinicians could be prescribing the test within a few years if larger trials confirm the initial findings. The early work was built on patient-donated menstrual samples and laboratory signals that Burns and collaborators have studied for several years.
For local patients and pelvic-health therapists, the prospect of an at-home diagnostic has clear appeal. A Cincinnati pelvic-floor therapist told a huge step that the ability to collect a sample at home would be “a huge step” for families navigating chronic pelvic pain. Burns says her own decade-long fight with misdiagnosis and multiple surgeries is part of why she turned to this research, and both clinicians and advocates say larger studies and regulatory review will determine how quickly the test moves from lab bench to clinic.
