Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common infection among women and
is associated with increased risk of preterm labor during
pregnancy. BV-infected women who are pregnant and treated with
the antibiotic metronidazole have less BV-causing bacteria but
are just as likely to deliver preterm. New detection methods
have found several bacterial species that were previously not
known to be involved in BV. These bacteria– termed “fastidious
bacteria”– had previously gone undetected because they don’t
grow well in lab cultures. VIDI affiliate investigator Dr.
Caroline Mitchell and her colleagues used sensitive DNA
detection to study these fastidious bacteria in pregnant women
taking metronidazole. They found that most BV-associated
bacteria decrease significantly following treatment, even those
resistant to metronidazole treatment. Concentrations of two
fastidious species decreased with oral but not vaginal
metronidazole, but the rate of preterm labor was not different
in these women. This suggests that the response of th