Cervical microbiota analysis

The human cervical microbiome may affect natural history of various sexually transmitted infections, including human papillomavirus (HPV). Persistent oncognic HPV infection is a necessary cause of cervical carcinoma. Subjects in this study consisted of 120 women, and they have visited three or more times to study hospital. Subjects enrolled with HPV infection were followed for about 18~24 months. Hybrid capture method was used for detection of oncogenic HPV. Metagenomic DNA was extracted from cervical swab samples of subjects, and bacterial 16S rRNA gene was amplified for microbial community analysis. The compositions of bacterial community were sequenced by pyrosequencing and analyzed.The composition of bacterial community was unique by disease status in each subject. The most predominant phyla were Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria. Relatively lower diversity values obtained from bacterial community in vaginal samples than other body sites were observed (41-117 OTUs and lower than 2.35 of Shannon diversity index). These results indicate that the composition of bacterial community in cervical sample of each subject is unique and the composition could be related to the disease status. Further studies of additional subjects will provide a significant difference of cervical bacterial communities among disease status, and this difference help to understand the correlation between microbiome and HPV infection.