Several studies suggest that progesterone and estrogens may affect HIV transmission in different, possibly opposing ways. Nonetheless, a direct comparison of their effects on the mucosal immune system has never been done. We hypothesize that sex hormones might impact the availability of cells and immune factors important in early stages of mucosal transmission, and, in doing so influence the ri...

BACKGROUND Rapid innate immune defences against infection involve the recognition of invading pathogens by specific pattern recognition receptors recently attributed to the family of Toll-like receptors (TLR). Little is known about the in vivo protein expression or distribution of TLR in the female reproductive tract in humans. It is likely that TLR distribution in the female reproductive tract...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In our clinical experience, there seemed to be a correlation between cervical stump bleeding and adenomyosis. Therefore, we wanted to conduct a study to determine whether there was an actual correlation and to identify other risk factors for persistent bleeding after a laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy. METHODS The study included women who underwent laparoscopi...

Colonization and disruption of the epithelium is a major infection mechanism of mucosal pathogens. The epithelium counteracts infection by exfoliating damaged cells while maintaining the mucosal barrier function. The sexually transmitted bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC) infects the female reproductive tract primarily from the endocervix, causing gonorrhea. However, the mechanism by which GC...

Many mucosal factors in the female genital tract (FGT) have been associated with HIV susceptibility, but little is known about their anatomical distribution in the FGT compartments. This study comprehensively characterized global immune factor expression in different tissue sites of the lower and upper FGT by using a systems biology approach. Tissue sections from the ectocervix, endocervix, and...

Immunohistochemistry is widely used to support a pathology diagnosis of cervical adenocarcinoma despite the absence of a systematic review and meta-analysis of the published data. This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to investigate the sensitivity and specificity of immunohistochemistry biomarkers in the tissue-based diagnosis of cervical adenocarcinoma histotypes compared wit...

To assess associations of nonulcerative sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-susceptible leukocytes on female genital mucosa, cervicovaginal specimens from 32 HIV-negative STD clinic patients with gonorrhea, chlamydial infection, or trichomoniasis were compared with specimens from 32 clinic patients without these infections. Twenty-eight patients had sing...

Introduction Infectious and inflammatory diseases of the lower genitalia in women of reproductive age continue to occupy one of the leading places in the overall structure of gynecological morbidity, their frequency varies between 65-80% and does not tend to decrease. Various surgical interventions, traumas, abortions, early sexual debut contribute to a change in the microbiocenosis of the vagi...

patients and methods in the current descriptive study, 255 endocervical swab samples were collected from the obstetrics and gynecology clinics of kashan, iran from december 2012 to july 2013. cervical swabs were placed in transport media and sent to the laboratory. to identify c. trachomatis in the samples polymerase chain reaction (pcr) was performed to amplify a sequence in the cryptic plasmi...