Treatment for Bacterial Vaginosis: A Cohort Study

Copyright © 2012 Caroline Mitchell et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective: Evaluate predictors of vaginal colonization with lactobacilli after treatment for bacterial vaginosis (BV).Methods. Vaginal fluid specimens from women with BV underwent qPCR for Lactobacillus crispatus, L. jensenii, and L. iners pre- and posttreatment. Results. Few women with BV were colonized with L. crispatus (4/44, 9%) or L. jensenii (1/44, 2%), though all had L. iners. One month posttreatment 12/44 (27%) had L. crispatus, 12/44 (27%) L. jensenii, and 43/44 (98%) L. iners. Presence of L. jensenii posttreatment was associated with cure (Risk Ratio (RR) 1.67; 95%CI 1.09–2.56); L. crispatus showed a similar trend (RR 1.41; 95% CI 0.89–2.24, P = 0.14). Receptive oral sex was associated with 2.2-log10 lower concentration of L. crispatus (95 % CI−4.38, −.02), and digital-vaginal sex with 2.6-log10 lower concentration (95 % CI −4.87, −.33). Conclusion. One month after BV treatment, few women established colonization with L. crispatus or L. jensenii. Few behaviors were associated with colonization. 1