Diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis by a new multiplex peptide nucleic acid fluorescence in situ hybridization method

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  Centre of Biological Engineering, LIBRO – Laboratory of Research in Biofilms Rosário Oliveira, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.698v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases, Women's Health
Keywords
Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH), Peptide Nucleic Acid Probe (PNA probe), Lactobacillus spp., Gardnerella vaginalis, Bacterial vaginosis, Biofilms
Copyright
© 2014 Machado et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Machado A, Castro J, Cereija T, Almeida C, Cerca N. 2014. Diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis by a new multiplex peptide nucleic acid fluorescence in situ hybridization method. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e698v1

Abstract

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is one of most common vaginal infection and its diagnosis by classical methods reveals low specificity. Our goal was to compare the accuracy of BV diagnosis between the gold standard method, Nugent score, and our novel Peptide Nucleic Acid Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (PNA-FISH) methodology, which targets Lactobacillus and Gardnerella vaginalis populations. Epidemiological characteristic of the population under study (n=150) mirrored what has been described before in other major studies. Our results have shown a sensitivity of 84.6% (95% confidence interval (CI), from 64.3 to 95.0%) and a specificity of 97.6% (95% CI, from 92.6 to 99.4%), which attests the clinical value of this PNA-FISH approach. This methodology combines the specificity of PNA probes for Lactobacillus species and G. vaginalis visualization, and the criteria defined by Nugent score, allowing a trustful evaluation of the bacteria present in vaginal microflora and avoiding the occurrence of misleading diagnostics. Therefore, the PNA-FISH methodology represents a valuable alternative for BV diagnosis.

Author Comment

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