Quantitative profiling of the vaginal microbiota improves resolution of the microbiota-immune axis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The composition of the vaginal microbiota is closely linked to adverse sexual and reproductive health outcomes, due in part to effects on genital immunology. Compositional approaches such as metagenomic sequencing provide a snapshot of all bacteria in a sample and have become the standard for characterizing the vaginal microbiota, but only provide microbial relative abundances. We hypothesized that the addition of absolute abundance data would provide a more complete picture of host-microbe interactions in the female genital tract.

Results

We analyzed cervicovaginal secretions from 196 female sex workers in Kenya and found that bacterial load was elevated among women with diverse, bacterial vaginosis (BV)-type microbiota and lower among women with Lactobacillus pr

SUBMITTER: Armstrong E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11792376 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature