Characteristics of Vaginal Microbiome in Women with Pelvic Inflammatory Disease in Korea

Abstract

Human vaginal microorganisms play an important role in maintaining good health throughout the human life cycle. An imbalance in the vaginal microbiota is associated with an increased risk of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). This study aimed to characterize and compare vaginal microbial profiles of premenopausal Korean women with and without PID. 74 Korean premenopausal female vaginal samples were obtained; 33 were from healthy women (a control group) and 41 from PID patients. Vaginal fluid samples were collected from the vaginal wall and posterior cervix and then analyzed by 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene-based amplicon sequencing. Results showed a significant difference between the vaginal microbial communities of the two groups (Jensen-Shannon, p = 0.014; Bray-Curtis, p = 0.009; Generalized UniFrac, p = 0.007; UniFrac, p = 0.008). Lactobacillus accounted for the highest percentage (61.0%) of the control group but was significantly decreased (34.9%) in PID patients; this was the most significant difference among all bacterial communities (p = 0.028, LDA effect size = 5.129). In addition, in the PID patient group, species diversity significantly increased (Simpson, p = 0.07) as the proportion of various pathogens increased evenly, resulting in a polymicrobial infection. Similarly, lactate, which constituted the highest percentage of the organic acids in the control group, was significantly decreased in the PID patient group (p = 0.04). The present study’s findings will help understand PID from the microbiome perspective and are expected to contribute to the development of more efficient PID diagnosis and treatment modalities.

The Effects of Iron Deficiency on the Gut Microbiota in Women of Childbearing Age

“…Data were analyzed according to previously described procedures [ 27 ]. The EzBioCloud server ( , accessed on 15 December 2022) was used for data processing.…”

Characteristics and Microbiome Profiling of Korean Gochang Bokbunja Vinegar by the Fermentation Process

“…QIAamp DNA Mini Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) was used for total DNA extraction. Subsequent procedures were performed according to the protocol used in our laboratory as described in previous reports [ 28 , 29 ]. It consists of 16 S rRNA gene amplicon library preparation and subsequent sequencing.…”

Characterization of Fecal Microbiomes of Osteoporotic Patients in Korea

“…PCR amplification of the 16S rRNA gene . The 16S bacterial rRNA (V4 hypervariable region) was amplified using Illumina 16S amplicon primer set (5 μM each) (Forward primer: 5’-TCGTCGGCAGCGTCAGATGT-GTATAAGAGACAG-CCTACGGGNGGCWGCAG-3’, Reverse primer: 5’-GTCTCGTGGGCTCGGAGATGT-GTATAAGAGACAGGACTACHVGG-GTATCTAAT-CC-3’) with 10 ng of template DNA and KAPA HiFi HotStart ReadyMix (Kapa Biosystems, USA) following the previously described protocol by our team ( Kim et al 2021 ). Briefly, the PCR was performed on a Veriti 96-well Thermal cycler (Applied Biosystems, Thermo Fisher, USA) with all 76 samples, including negative control (no template DNA) and positive control (5 ng of mouse stool DNA).…”

“…Pooled library (50 pMol) was used for sequencing with 30% PhiX spiking on an iSeqTM100 platform (Illumina, USA). Data were analyzed following the procedures described previously by our team ( Kim et al 2021 ; ul-Haq et al 2022). Briefly, we analyzed data using the EzBioCloud server ( http://www.ezbiocloud.net).…”