Menstrual cups, maturation of the adolescent vaginal microbiome, and STI/HIV risk

Study of the mechanisms by which menstrual cup use leads to reduced BV and STIs, and the effect of menstrual cup use on evolution of the adolescent vaginal microbiome. This project includes characterizing the vaginal bacterial microbiome using high throughput amplicon sequencing in a randomly selected sample of school girls aged 13-25 years, nested as a longitudinal sub-study within a cluster randomized controlled trial to scale up menstrual cup use among school girls in western Kenya

本研究旨在解析月经杯使用可降低细菌性阴道病（Bacterial Vaginosis, BV）与性传播感染（Sexually Transmitted Infections, STIs）的作用机制，以及月经杯使用对青少年阴道微生物组演化的影响。本项目将针对肯尼亚西部13至25岁在校女生的随机抽样样本，采用高通量扩增子测序（high throughput amplicon sequencing）对阴道细菌微生物组进行特征分析；该纵向子研究嵌套于一项旨在推广肯尼亚西部在校女生月经杯使用的整群随机对照试验（cluster randomized controlled trial）之中。