Medical Microbiology & Diagnosis

Comparative Analysis of Vaginal Bacterial Diversity in Northern-Chinese Women Associated With or Without Bacterial Vaginosis

Abstract

Yajuan Liu, Wenbo Hao, Chaohui Duan, Jianping Tan, Weiwen Xu, Shimeng Zhang, Xiaoqing Liao, Ming Li, Shuhong Luo

Background: Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is the common vaginal infection in women and it has been linked to enhanced risks for pre-term birth, pelvic inflammatory disease and sexually transmitted diseases. BV is caused by a disorder of vaginal microbiota which changes from the normal lactobacillus dominated community to a more diverse community of non-lactobacillus bacteria. Several previous reports analyzed the overall vaginal microbial communities of volunteers from limited sampling area and they suggested a possible link between the vaginal microbial contents and the ethnicity of women. Here, we analyzed the diversity of vaginal microbiota in 10 subjects associated with BV (BV+) and 10 subjects without BV (BV-) from the metropolitan area of Herbing in Northern China using full-length 16S rDNA. Results: The vaginal bacterial communities detected in subjects with BV were much more taxon rich and diverse than those without BV. At a 97% sequence similarity cutoff, the number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) per 10 subjects with BV was nearly three times greater than 10 subjects without BV by 29.4 ± 9.3 versus 11.7 ± 7.8 (Mean ±SD). Our data confirmed that there is a shift in the abundance of bacterial species present in the vaginal environment when BV and non-BV groups were compared. Each sequence read was assigned to a genus or a species when possible. Principal component analysis was performed at genus levels. Most BV+ samples clustered together while there were two clusters among BV- samples. Several bacteria have been found to be associated with BV, including Gardnerella, Atopobium, Peptoniphilus, Leptotrichia/Sneathia, Prevotella, Parvimonas and Dialister, Based on result of classification, four possible novel phylotype microorganisms were found. Conclusions: The data presented here on the composition and richness of the vaginal microbial ecosystem in BV and health state will provide the depth insight in the etiology of BV.