A new study has revealed that bacterial vaginosis (BV), a condition affecting nearly a third of women worldwide is actually Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). The disease can cause infertility, premature births and newborn deaths.
These latest findings can change how it is treated.
The study was conducted by Authors Professor Catriona Bradshaw and Dr Lenka Vodstrcil and their team at Monash University and Alfred Health at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre.
The findings of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine journal. According to the researchers, the standard practice of treating BV as an imbalance (disruption) to the vaginal microbiome means that more than 50 per cent of women get it back within three months after the standard week-long treatment of an oral antibiotic.
In their trial of 164 couples with BV in monogamous relationships, they found that treating BV as an STI, with both sexual partners treated simultaneously, achieves significantly higher cure rates than the current practice of only treating women.
In fact, they stopped the trial early when it became clear that BV recurrence was halved in the partner treatment group compared to treating women alone, the university said in a statement.
“This successful intervention is relatively cheap and short and has the potential for the first time to not only improve BV cure for women, but opens up exciting new opportunities for BV prevention, and prevention of the serious complications associated with BV,” Professor Bradshaw said.
Dr Vodstrcil said having BV was already known to increase the risk of contracting other STIs.
“We’ve suspected for a long time that it’s a sexually transmitted infection (STI), because it has a similar incubation period (after sex) to most STIs and is associated with the same risk factors as STIs like chlamydia, such as change in sexual partner and not using condoms.”
Professor Bradshaw said that while “studies have shown that men may harbor bacterial species associated with bacterial vaginosis on the penile skin and inside the penis, previous trials that included male partners did not show improved cure rates in their female partners.”
“This was interpreted as evidence against sexual transmission,” Professor Bradshaw said.
“However, these studies had design limitations, and none used a combination of oral and topical antibiotics to adequately clear BV bacteria in men, especially from the penile-skin site. Our trial has shown that reinfection from partners is causing a lot of the BV recurrence women experience, and provides evidence that BV is in fact an STI. Part of the difficulty in establishing whether BV is sexually transmitted has been that we still don’t know precisely which bacteria are the cause, but advances in genomic sequencing are helping us close in on that mystery,” Professor Bradshaw said.
Following the results, Melbourne Sexual Health Centre changed its clinical practice to treat couples. “This information has been co-designed with consumers and participants in the trial and health professionals to make it accessible to all,” Professor Bradshaw said.
“Changes in national and international treatment guidelines always take time, so we felt an obligation to provide accurate online and downloadable information at the time that the results of the trial are published.”