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

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