Accessing vaginal pH is fundamental during gynaecological visit for the detection of abnormal vaginal flora (AVF), but use of pH strips may be time-consuming and difficult to interpret. The aim of this study was to evaluate the VS-SENSE test (Common Sense Ltd, Caesarea, Israel) as a tool for the diagnosis of AVF and its correlation with abnormal pH and bacterial vaginosis (BV). The study popula...

The human vaginal microbiome is dominated by bacteria from the genus Lactobacillus, which create an acidic environment thought to protect women against sexually transmitted pathogens and opportunistic infections. Strikingly, lactobacilli dominance appears to be unique to humans; while the relative abundance of lactobacilli in the human vagina is typically >70%, in other mammals lactobacilli rar...

PURPOSE Measurement of intravaginal pH provides a reasonable assessment of vaginal health but is fraught with the potential for several sampling errors. The purposes of the study were to determine the variability of self-sampled vaginal pH among women using an inexpensive swab-based pH test compared with a clinician-obtained specimen, and variability of vaginal pH within 3 regions of the normal...

Introduction: Because of improvements in the measurement methods of FSH levels in serum, there is less interest in evaluating vaginal pH for the diagnosis of menopause nowadays. The traditional test to diagnose menopause has been FSH, so far. In recent studies it has been shown that diagnosis of menopause by testing for vaginal pH is a simple, non-invasive and inexpensive method .This study int...

BACKGROUND/AIM Vaginal and cervical swab culture is still very common procedure in our country's everyday practice whereas simple and rapid diagnostic methods have been very rarely used. The aim of this study was to show that the employment of simple and rapid diagnostic tools [vaginal fluid wet mount microscopy (VFWMM), vaginal pH and potassium hydroxide (KOH) test] offers better assessment of...

AIM Quantitative evaluation of the effect caused by vaginal administration of gelatin capsules loaded with starch pellets and lyophilized powder, respectively, on vaginal pH and microflora. METHOD Administration of gelatin capsules loaded with fast-disintegrating starch pellets (group P) or lyophilized lactose/skimmed milk (group L) was compared to no intervention (group C) in a 3-way randomi...

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) on the vaginal flora of postmenopausal women. METHODS Vaginal cultures were obtained from 15 postmenopausal women whose hormonal statuses were documented by serum follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and serum estrogen levels. After 8 weeks of ERT, consisting of 0.1 mg of estradiol delivered daily by dermal patch, the vagin...

BACKGROUND Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is one of the most common urogenital infections among women of reproductive age that represents shifts in microbiota from Lactobacillus spp. to diverse anaerobes. The aim of our study was to evalute the diagnostic values of Gardnerella, Atopobium, Eggerthella, Megasphaera typeI, Leptotrichia/Sneathia and Prevotella, defined as a vaginal pathogenic community f...

Ever since the pH of the vagina was found to be much more acidic than blood and interstitial fluids, a belief going back more than a century has persisted that the vagina is protected from pathogenic organisms by the high level of hydronium ions present. A corollary of this belief is that the pH of the vagina and antipathogen activity is due to colonizing Lactobacilli. Unfortunately, this dogma...

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) and complicated vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) are frequently occurring vaginal infections in postmenopausal women, caused by an imbalance in vaginal microflora. Postmenopausal women suffer from decreased ovarian hormones estrogen and progesterone. A normal, healthy vaginal microflora mainly comprises Lactobacillus species (spp.), which act beneficially as a bacterial b...