BACKGROUND Several studies have suggested that pregnant women infected with Trichomonas vaginalis may be at increased risk of an adverse outcome. GOAL To evaluate prospectively the association between T. vaginalis and risk of adverse pregnancy outcome in a large cohort of ethnically diverse women. STUDY DESIGN At University-affiliated hospitals and antepartum clinics in five United States c...

Introduction The parasite Trichomonas vaginalis is a haploid, flagellated, eukaryotic microbe that adheres to the human urogenital tract and causes the most common sexually transmitted parasitic infection, trichomoniasis ("trich"), with around 250 million new cases reported annually worldwide and about 7 million cases in the United States [1]. Previously considered a female “nuisance disease,” ...

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE(S) Trichomoniasis caused by Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common non-viral sexually transmitted infection. Morphological transformation from the trophozoite stage to the amoeboid or pseudocyst stage is crucial for T. vaginalis infection and survival. Protein phosphorylation is a key post-translational modification involved in the regulation of several biological processes...

Neutrophils are the predominant inflammatory cells found in the vaginal discharges of patients infected with Trichomonas vaginalis. Although chemoattractants, such as leukotriene B(4) and interleukin-8 (IL-8), are found in the vaginal discharges of symptomatic trichomoniasis patients, little is known about the mechanism of how neutrophils accumulate or mediate initial inflammatory response afte...

A strain of Trichomonas vaginalis (IR-78), recently isolated from a patient afflicted with recurrent symptomatic trichomoniasis, showed resistance to metronidazole, tinidazole, and nimorazole in vitro as well as in vivo. In a serial dilution test using cysteine monohydrochloride-peptone-liver infusion-maltose medium, T. vaginalis IR-78 was only resistant under aerobic conditions. Under anaerobi...

Broth culture of Trichomonas vaginalis is considered the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of trichomoniasis. Two studies were carried out to evaluate modified Columbia agar (MCA) for the isolation of T. vaginalis from clinical samples. Study I compared isolation on MCA to that on liquid medium with 889 vaginal samples. Out of 63 samples positive for T. vaginalis (7.1% of total), MCA identified...

A cross-sectional prevalence survey of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) was conducted among female sex workers (FSWs) in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. A total of 505 FSWs participated in the survey. All eligible participants gave informed consent. Demographic, behavioral, and clinical information of the participants was gathered by direct structured interviews. Tampon swabs were collec...

Specific receptor-mediated binding by Trichomonas vaginalis of human erythrocytes was demonstrated. The ability of live parasites to internalize erythrocytes was also documented. In vitro growth assays during lipid-free and iron-limiting conditions that do not support the survival of T. vaginalis organisms showed that purified erythrocyte lipids and hemoglobin were each able to provide lipids a...

Multifarious transcription of the adhesion protein ap65-1 gene in the human pathogen, Trichomonas vaginalis, is critically regulated by the coordination of two similar but opposite oriented DNA regulatory regions, MRE-1/MRE-2r and MRE-2f, both of which are binding sites for multiple Myb-like proteins. In the present study, MRE-1/MRE-2r was demonstrated to be composed of multiple overlapping pro...

Trichomonas vaginalis and Tritrichomonas foetus are parasitic, flagellated protists that inhabit the urogenital tract of humans and bovines, respectively. T. vaginalis causes the most prevalent non-viral sexually transmitted disease worldwide and has been associated with an increased risk for human immunodeficiency virus-1 infection in humans. Infections by T. foetus cause significant losses to...