Tag Archives: results

STD Awareness: Transgender Men and Cervical Health

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Healthy cervical cells as seen under a microscope. Image: National Cancer Institute

Just one month ago, headlines screamed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received a list of “banned words” from the Trump administration. One of those words was transgender, raising the alarm that the current president might be eyeing policies that would further marginalize the trans population and harm their health. (Other forbidden words include fetus, evidence-based, and vulnerable.) Some have argued it wasn’t Trump policy per se, but self-censoring on the part of the CDC to protect their budgets from being slashed by legislators hostile to transgender rights, abortion rights, science, people of color, and poor people.

In any case, refusing to use words like transgender can have grave consequences for trans health. If the CDC can’t reference the trans population when requesting money for services and studies, they will be hobbled in their ability to serve that population’s needs.

Recommendations for cervical cancer screening are the same for anyone with a cervix, whether trans or cisgender.

January is Cervical Health Awareness Month. Anyone who has a cervix can develop cervical cancer — including transgender men who have not had their cervixes surgically removed. In observance of the month, and in defiance of directions to avoid the word transgender, today we’ll discuss the importance of cervical health in trans men — and why taxpayer-funded entities like the CDC and the National Institutes of Health must be able to study and serve this population.

Transgender men (or trans men for short) are individuals born with female reproductive organs, but who identify as male. Likewise, cisgender women were born with female reproductive organs and identify as female. Both trans men and cisgender women were born with cervixes, and wherever a cervix exists, the possibility of cervical cancer exists. Continue reading →

Home Pregnancy Testing 101

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You missed a period. You had unprotected sex. You didn’t take your birth control pills. Are you pregnant? How soon can you know? What are your options to find out?

Approximately every month, most sexually active women of child-bearing years could become pregnant. During ovulation, an egg is released from the ovary and makes its way to the uterus. If it is fertilized by a sperm and implants on the uterine wall, a woman is pregnant. If she is not pregnant, the lining of the uterus sheds (this is your period), and the cycle repeats.

Pregnancy tests are most accurate about one week after a missed period.

When a fertilized egg attaches itself to the uterine wall, the body begins producing a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. The levels of this hormone rise rapidly in early pregnancy, almost doubling every two to three days. hCG is detectable in urine and blood, and is a sign of pregnancy.

There are different types of pregnancy tests available. Home pregnancy tests, which you can buy in drugstores, test for hCG in urine. Blood tests done in a health provider’s office don’t just test for the presence of hCG, which indicates you are pregnant, but also can tell how much hCG is present. Measuring hCG levels helps a provider determine how far along you are, if you have more than one developing embryo, or if there might be a problem with the pregnancy. Continue reading →

Interpreting Abnormal Pap Tests

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Because a Pap test screens for abnormal cervical cells and because those cell changes can be associated with cervical cancer, being on the receiving end of an abnormal Pap test result can be frightening, intimidating, and confusing.

On the “frightening” aspect: Some people assume that an abnormal Pap means that cervical cancer is imminent. On the contrary, the National Cancer Institute not only states that cervical cancer, when it develops, takes “many years” to do so, but also that “[t]he majority of infections with high-risk HPVs [human papillomaviruses] clear up on their own.” This is not to suggest that regular screenings aren’t important — but rather, that they do their job and detect cervical changes in plenty of time to prevent cancer from developing in the first place.

Remember that if you’re confused about your Pap test results, part of your health care provider’s job is to answer your questions and keep you informed.

On the “confusing”: It’s true. There are a lot of different letter codes. Though some of them look awfully similar, they each mean a different thing. Moreover, the clinical recommendations for how to follow up with an abnormal Pap can depend not only on the code — in other words, the specific abnormal result — but also on one’s age and medical history.

Ready to sort them out?

Most labs in the United States use a classification system called the Bethesda System in order to have some standard terminology when reporting results. The Bethesda System uses the term squamous intraepithelial lesion to describe changes on the surface of the cervix. It categorizes those changes in these ways: Continue reading →