Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Vaginal Microbiota Of Women With Frequent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis, X. Zhou, R. Westman, R. Hickey, M. Hansmann, Colleen Kennedy, T. Osborn, L. Forney

Colleen Kennedy Stockdale

Vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) is an insidious infection that afflicts a large proportion of women of all ages, and 5 to 8% of affected women experience recurrent VVC (RVVC). The aim of this study was to explore the possible importance of vaginal bacterial communities in reducing the risk of RVVC. The species composition and diversity of microbial communities were evaluated for 42 women with and without frequent VVC based on profiles of terminal restriction fragment polymorphisms of 16S rRNA genes and phylogenetic analysis of cloned 16S rRNA gene sequences from the numerically dominant microbial populations. The data showed that there were …