Quantitative PCR assessments of bacterial species in women with and without bacterial vaginosis.

ABSTRACT: Knowledge of the abundance of bacterial species in vaginal communities will help us to better understand their role in health and disease. However, progress in this field has been limited because quantifying bacteria in natural specimens is an arduous process. We developed quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assays to facilitate assessments of bacterial abundance in vaginal specimens and evaluated the utility of these assays by measuring species abundance in patients whose vaginal floras were clinically described as normal, intermediate, or bacterial vaginosis (BV) as defined by Nugent's criteria. The qPCR measurements showed that Lactobacillus species were predominant in normal vaginal specimens and that high Lactobacillus crispatus and Lactobacillus jensenii abundance was specific to norma

SUBMITTER: Zozaya-Hinchliffe M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2863870 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature