Does exposure to different menstrual products affect the vaginal environment?

Abstract

The vaginal ecosystem is a key component of women's health. It also represents an ideal system for ecologists to investigate the consequence of perturbations on species diversity and emerging properties between organizational levels. Here, we study how exposure to different types of menstrual products is linked to microbial, immunological, demographic, and behavioural measurements in a cohort of young adult women who reported using more often tampons (n = 107) or menstrual cups (n = 31). We first found that cup users were older and smoked less than tampon users.When analysing health indicators, we detected potential associations between cups use reporting and fungal genital infection. A multivariate analysis confirmed that in our cohort, reporting using cups over tampons was associated with the higher odds ratio to report a fungal genital infection diagnosis by a medical doctor within the last 3 months. We did not detect significant differences between groups in terms of their | 2593 TESSANDIER et al.

The use of menstrual cups is associated with the maintenance of healthy vaginal microbiota: A prospective longitudinal study

“…Nevertheless, the participants of the French study did not exclusively use one menstrual management method at a time. [27] Reinforcing the safety of this method, we report no side effects of menstrual cup usage during the time of the study. Despite eventual case reports in the literature of complications associated with menstrual collectors, a robust set of recent evidence reinforces our observations, indicating their safety.…”

“…Despite eventual case reports in the literature of complications associated with menstrual collectors, a robust set of recent evidence reinforces our observations, indicating their safety. [3,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Additionally, we report a great acceptance of this method by most participants. Claims of initial adaptation difficulties and leaks are consistent with other studies.…”

Evolutionary ecology of human‐associated microbes

“…This process maintains allelic diversity implicated in drug resistance and is most apparent in industrialised populations. Similarly, Tessandier et al (2023) test the effect of different types of menstruation protection on the vaginal microbiota. Although they do not find strong patterns, some clustering suggests that different types of protection could lead to vaginal changes that affect the microbiota.…”

Editorial 2024

“…These 21 papers focus on various types of microbial diversity, including domesticates, pathogens, and host‐associated microbiota, using a range of methodologies including population and evolutionary genomics, metagenomics, and field and laboratory experiments. As a whole, the papers address a few main subjects: domesticated microorganisms and microorganisms thriving in anthropogenic environments (Harrouard et al., 2023; Silva et al., 2023; von Gastrow et al., 2023), fungal pathogens (Ali et al., 2023; Louet et al., 2023; Rogério et al., 2023; Saubin et al., 2023; Stalder et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2023; Zewdie et al., 2023), metagenomics and microbiomes of animals and human (Bischofberger & Hall, 2023; Corsi et al., 2023; Mac Alpine et al., 2023; Moeller, 2023; Pedro et al., 2023; Peimbert & Alcaraz, 2023; Tessandier et al., 2023; Yuan et al., 2023), and metagenomics and microbiomes of crops (Gao et al., 2023; Richard et al., 2023). Collectively the articles in this Special Issue ‘underline the huge impact of the anthropogenic environment in microbial evolution, including the emergence and spread of pathogens as well as the benefits provided by domesticated or mutualistic fungi and bacteria’ (Giraud et al., 2023).…”

“…Rogério et al, 2023;Saubin et al, 2023;Stalder et al, 2023;Wang et al, 2023;Zewdie et al, 2023), metagenomics and microbiomes of animals and human(Bischofberger & Hall, 2023;Corsi et al, 2023;Mac Alpine et al, 2023;Moeller, 2023;Pedro et al, 2023;Peimbert & Alcaraz, 2023;Tessandier et al, 2023;Yuan et al, 2023), and metagenomics and microbiomes of crops(Gao et al, 2023;Richard et al, 2023). Collectively the articles in this Special Issue 'underline the huge impact of the anthropogenic environment in microbial evolution, including the emergence and spread of pathogens as well as the benefits provided by domesticated or mutualistic fungi and bacteria'(Giraud et al, 2023).Finally, our third Special Issue, Insights into Ecological & Evolutionary Processes via Community Metabarcoding includes 'papers that highlight the power of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data to address classic questions in ecology and evolution, particularly focused on metabarcoding (amplicon) datasets in conjunction with complementary -omics data types and/or models/theory to infer overall ecosystem processes'(Gillespie et al, 2023).…”