The Vaginal Microbiome Is Associated with Susceptibility to HIV Infection

To explore the potential role of the vaginal microbiome in HIV acquisition, researchers conducted a nested case-control study in 55 HIV-positive women and 55 matched HIV-negative (control) women within a cohort of 349 women from 6 sub-Saharan African countries. Following broad-range polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis in vaginal samples from the entire cohort, the 20 most common bacterial species were selected for taxon-directed real-time PCR.

In the case-control comparison, lower relative abundance of Lactobacillus iners was associated with significantly higher probability of HIV acquisition. Real-time PCR in the full cohort showed that higher concentrations of Parvimonas species type 1 and type 2, Gemella asaccharolytica, Mycoplasma h…