Distribution of Lactobacillus species in Iranian women with both human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and bacterial vaginosis (BV)

Abstract

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the most common cause of abnormal vaginal discharge for women of childbearing age. Despite many confirming surveys, which proved the relationship between BV and human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, but this remains a matter of debate. The objective of this original article is to clarify BV is associated with HPV infection in Iranian women by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method. The vaginal swabs of seventy-five women (55 and 20 samples from patients and controls, respectively) with and without manifestation of HPV were collected during February 2018 and December 2018, and extracted DNA was assayed by real-time PCR looking for the HPV serotypes and bacterial load by using bacterial 16S rRNA gene. A total of 55 cervical, 13 (23.4%) isolates were HPV-negative, and 42 (76.4%) isolates were HPV-positive. In total, 83.3% of HPV-positive isolates had BV infection. The hotspot of incidence with BV is between the ages of 26–34 years. Although, we can see there are low frequency of Lactobacillus spp. in HPV 16 patients among other groups but unfortunately, we can't approve it with significant value (P-value >0.05). Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus jensenii showed higher colony count in BV women that infected with Gardnerella vaginalis than healthy women. The number of L. gasseri and L. rhamnosus are directly related to reducing the risk of HPV infection (P-value <0.05). To sum up, this study show that there was no statistically significant relationship between BV and/or HPV with Lactobacillus species.