An irritating condition that affects up to 30% of women and girls — and is linked to preterm birth and higher likelihood of sexually transmitted infections — is one step closer to a cure, due to a $1.5 million federal grant to researchers at Case Western Reserve University.
Bacterial vaginosis is a condition where women may experience discomfort, discharge and a fishy smell. It's caused by an bacterial imbalance in the vagina.
Cases can be resolved with antibiotics, which should kill the bad bacteria. But lead CWRU researcher Gina Lewin said doctors have long been frustrated that the drugs don’t seem work in 20% of women. And of those women that get better, about 50% have a recurrence of bacterial vaginosis within a year.
"There’s this huge need to be able to develop better approaches to promote that more optimal community of the vaginal microbiome," Lewin said.
While most women experience mild symptoms, bacterial vaginosis can carry some large risks. The bad bacterial environment makes it more likely someone will contract a sexually transmitted disease, and they carry a higher risk of getting cervical cancer.
Researchers with the school's Center for Global Health and Diseases will study bacteria swabs of women to try to learn what conditions create bacterial vaginosis, and how they might be able to prevent it from happening.
“We’re really trying to look at them at the single cell level and understand how really small differences in what bacteria are there and what they are doing might be changing the stability," Lewin said.
Reversing the funding gap
Despite women making up half the population, funding for women-specific health issues is just a fraction of the dollars developed for studying male-specific research. In 2020, only 10.8% of the National Institutes of Health's funding — the primary public funder of medical research in the U.S. — went to women's health research.
It doesn't help that many women don’t like talking about what’s going on in their vaginas, Lewin said.
The lack of discussion usually translates to less funding for research on the topic, though she said she's hopeful that a growing interest in understanding bacterial vaginosis will lead to improvements in women's health.
