Daily temporal dynamics of vaginal microbiota before, during and after episodes of bacterial vaginosis

Abstract

BackgroundBacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common gynecologic diagnosis characterized by dysbiosis of the vaginal microbiota. It is often accompanied by vaginal symptoms such as odor and discharge, but can be asymptomatic. Despite over 50 years of research, the etiology of BV is not well understood, which is a major impediment to treatment and prevention of BV.ResultsHere we report on the temporal dynamics of 25 vaginal communities over a 10 week period using samples collected daily from women who were diagnosed with symptomatic BV (15 women), asymptomatic BV (6 women), and women who did not have BV (4 women).ConclusionThis unique resource of samples and data will contribute to a better understanding of the role that the vaginal microbes have in the natural history of BV and lead to improved diagnosis and treatment.

Primate vaginal microbiomes exhibit species specificity without universal Lactobacillus dominance

“…Notably, few or no reads of Lactobacilli species were found in the samples from arboreal monkeys (howlers, lemurs and red colobus). Reads classified to the genus Gardnerella appeared to be undersampled from human samples (and possibly from NHP samples too) in this study, compared with previously published reports (Kim et al, 2009;Ravel et al, 2013). This may be attributed to not including the primer cocktail (27F-YM þ 3), as described in Frank et al, 2008. Recent studies (Zhou et al, 2010;Ravel et al, 2011;Ravel et al, 2013) have revealed Lactobacillus spp.…”

“…Reads classified to the genus Gardnerella appeared to be undersampled from human samples (and possibly from NHP samples too) in this study, compared with previously published reports (Kim et al, 2009;Ravel et al, 2013). This may be attributed to not including the primer cocktail (27F-YM þ 3), as described in Frank et al, 2008. Recent studies (Zhou et al, 2010;Ravel et al, 2011;Ravel et al, 2013) have revealed Lactobacillus spp. in low abundance in the vaginal tract of a subpopulation of apparently healthy women with high Nugent scores, who have been categorized as 'asymptomatic BV' (ABV) in contrast to 'symptomatic BV' (SBV) subjects.…”

“…Despite exhibiting the lowest richness, the human vaginal microbiome showed a significantly broader degree of dispersion in beta diversity (Supplementary Figure S6), suggesting the presence of individuals with highly distinct microbial compositions within this group. Indeed, the human subjects Hm409 and Hm403 in our data set, similar to the ABVs (Ravel et al, 2013), represent distinct subsets within humans with microbiomes characterized by low abundance of Lactobacilli spp., yet enriched in anaerobic bacteria commonly found in the vaginal tracts of NHPs. These findings are consistent with previous observations on vaginal microbiota of rhesus macaque and humans (Spear et al, 2010).…”

“…To address this, we compared the vaginal microbial composition of the NHPs in our study with that of human subjects with low abundance of Lactobacillus spp. (ABV and SBV), by including a recently published data set (Ravel et al, 2013) of ABV and SBV samples. Clustering analysis of pairwise binary Jaccard (Supplementary Figure S2) and Bray-Curtis (Supplementary Figure S3) Figure 1 Shannon-Weaver diversity indices generated using the 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing data.…”

New signaling pathways govern the host response to C. albicans infection in various niches

“…To this end, we took advantage of a preexisting clinical study focused on understanding the dynamics of the vaginal microbiome. In this study, vaginal samples were collected daily from 135 nonpregnant women over the course of 10 wk (Ravel et al 2013). To test if the PDGF BB and NEDD9 pathways are activated during clinical episodes of vaginal candidiasis, we performed RNA-seq using RNA isolated from vaginal swabs that were collected as part of this study.…”