Vagina microbiome: The Most Secret Garden

Amazing stuff!

"... Just like the gut microbiome, the vaginal microbiome varies across populations and, thanks to shifting hormone levels, across life stages and even within the menstrual cycle. Although inventories conducted of vaginal flora have identified numerous bacterial taxa, “there’s been a lack of attempt to understand the vaginal microbiome as an ecosystem,” ... “Women can have very different vaginal microbiome types. If you took a vaginal swab from any number of people at Radcliffe, you would find differently structured vaginal microbiomes.”
This variation in flora complicates general statements about what makes a healthy or asymptomatic vagina—and it also complicates the efficacy of treatments for disorders such as bacterial vaginosis (BV), estimated to affect a quarter of women worldwide, usually during their reproductive years. Aside from causing pain and discomfort, BV makes women more susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases and has been linked to preterm birth and low birth weight. ..."

The Most Secret Garden | Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University Of all the body’s microbiomes, the vagina’s is perhaps the least understood. In hopes of informing better therapies for vaginal health, the microbial ecologist Libusha Kelly is conducting research that could change that.