Quantitative microflora of the vagina

Influence of Maternal Bifidobacteria on the Establishment of Bifidobacteria Colonizing the Gut in Infants

“…This indicated that the total counts of bifidobacteria per se in the mother did not affect the bifidobacterial status of the baby, as has been reported previously (25). In this study using PCR methods, bifidobacteria were detected in more than 80% of the vaginal swab samples, and their counts were almost comparable to those of lactobacilli, whereas just a presence of bifidobacteria in the vagina had been previously reported using a culture-dependent method (26). The vaginal epithelium contains glycogen, a multichained polysaccharide.…”

“…The vaginal epithelium contains glycogen, a multichained polysaccharide. The amount of glycogen is regulated by the secretion level of both estrogens and progesterones (26,27). Because polysaccharides selectively increase the growth of bifidobacteria (28 -30), it is suggested that the vagina during pregnancy, in which female hormones are present at high levels, may therefore sustain the colonization of high counts of bifidobacteria.…”

Quantitative Bacteriology of the Vaginal Flora in Genital Disease

“…In this study, patients were those attending a venereal diseases clinic and were, therefore, mainly symptomatic and self referred. Other studies have used similar patients (Taylor et al, 1982), healthy volunteers , pregnant women (Levison et al, 1977), prehysterectomy patients (Bartlett et al, 1978) or women attending a family planning clinic either for contraceptive advice or because they had vaginitis (Levison et al, 1979). Second, the criteria used in assigning patients to different diagnostic groups have been very varied.…”

“…Second, the criteria used in assigning patients to different diagnostic groups have been very varied. In one study of 25 "healthy patients", 18 were pregnant and six of these had gonorrhoea (Levison et al, 1977) and in another study, the role of anaerobic bacteria in cervicitis is discussed, but 81% of the women with cervicitis also had positive findings for T. vaginalis infection (Lindner et al, 1978).…”

“…These advances have been made possible by the introduction of improved bacteriological techniques for the isolation of anaerobic organisms (Hungate, 1950;Holdeman, Cat0 and Moore, 1977) and by the development of reliable quantitative sampling techniques (Clarke, 1977). During the last few years several groups of workers (Levison et al, 1977;Lindner, Plantema and Hoogkamp-Korstanje, 1978) have used quantitative sampling techniques to collect a defined volume or weight of vaginal secretion for Bucks HP9 1QA). Aerobes were identified primarily by the methods of Cowan (1974) with the following exceptions: organisms identified as G .…”