Within our Isala project and its daughter studies, we already found a large number of different bacteria in the vaginal swabs. This means that each participant has her own unique vaginal microbiome profile. To present this large amount of information in a clear manner, we now chose to focus on 12 key vaginal bacteria that we regularly found in the vaginal swabs. Of course, we found many more. We grouped these together under “other type of bacteria”. For example, we regularly found Alloscardovia omnicolens, Sneathia vaginalis, Ureaplasma parvum, and so on.
These other bacteria occur mainly in smaller quantities in the vagina. Is your percentage of “other type of bacteria” high? Then that’s absolutely nothing to panic about! It just means that your vaginal microbiome is a little more unique than most of the vaginas we’ve explored. To give you an idea, 187 women who participated in the first phase of Isala had more than 50% of the bacteria in their vaginas that we referred to as “other” at that stage. We hope to learn and discover more about these “other” bacteria too, based on precious samples collected by our participants. Hopefully, we will be able to conduct further research in the coming years and who knows, our selection of 12 important bacteria may expand in the future. For now, we will remember that every bacterium has unique properties and is important, but it’s simply not possible to describe them all individually, which is why we created this umbrella group of “other type of bacteria”.
The most important advice we can give you always remains the same: do you experience complaints or are you worried about something? Then contact your doctor. Within Isala we even have a separate webpage with more background information especially for doctors, so you can certainly refer to that.
Not sure when you might need to make an appointment with your doctor? This is a list of common complaints that may indicate a (small-scale) problem with your vaginal health:
o Redness
o Swelling
o Pain (general)
o Itching
o Burning sensation
o Increase in vaginal discharge (different from normal monthly discharge)
o Change in vaginal discharge (different color, unpleasant odor)
o Pain during sexual contact
o Bladder infection
o Other…