Exhaustive repertoire of human vaginal microbiota

Abstract

Bacteria that colonize the vaginal microbiota of women play an important role in health and homeostasis. Disruption of the proportion of bacteria predisposes to dysbiosis like bacterial vaginosis or severe gynecological conditions such as preterm birth, pelvic inflammatory disease and also sexually transmitted diseases. Knowledge about normal and abnormal vaginal microbiota has become a little clearer in recent years. Culture techniques have made it possible to isolate and describe many bacterial species, whereas molecular methods have highlighted the limits of culture by showing that the vagina was a complex ecosystem containing a wide range of non-cultured or difficult-to-identify bacteria. Based on an exhaustive review of the scientific literature, we built the repertoire of all the bacteria found using culture-based and/or independent methods on the human vagina. So, whether they are valid or not, we inventoried 581 bacteria identified in the human vagina distributed into 10 taxa, mainly in the phyla of Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria with 206 distinct genera classified in 96 different families. This repertoire is essential for microbiologists and clinicians and represents the starting point for a Vaginal Microbiome Project such a project aimed to map the human vaginal microbiota, to better understand the dysbioses or infections caused by its imbalance in order to offer more appropriate treatments.