Potential Association between Vaginal Microbiota and Cervical Carcinogenesis in Korean Women: A Cohort Study

Study information

Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Atrayees on 2023-7-25

study design

cross-sectional observational, not case-control

Citation

PMID PubMed identifier for scientific articles.

33572693

DOI Digital object identifier for electronic documents.

10.3390/microorganisms9020294

URI

Authors

Kang GU, Jung DR, Lee YH, Jeon SY, Han HS, Chong GO, Shin JH

Journal

Microorganisms

Year

2021

Keywords:

CIN prediction, CIN severity, vaginal microbiome, vaginosis

Convincing studies demonstrated that vaginal flora is one of the most impactful key components for the well-being of the genital tract in women. Nevertheless, the potential capability of vaginal-derived bacterial communities as biomarkers to monitor cervical carcinogenesis (CC) has yet to be studied actively compared to those of bacterial vaginosis (BV). We hypothesized that vaginal microbiota might be associated with the progression of CC. In this study, we enrolled 23 participants, including healthy controls (HC group; n = 7), patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 2 and 3 (CIN group, n = 8), and patients with invasive cervical cancer (CAN group; n = 8). Amplicon sequencing was performed using the Ion Torrent PGM to characterize the vaginal microbiota. Patients with CIN and CAN presented vaginal microbiota dysbiosis compared with HC. The alpha diversity analysis revealed that CC has a trend to be increased in terms of diversity indexes. Moreover, CC was associated with the abundance of specific microbes, of which Lactobacillus and Gardnerella were the most significantly different between HC and CIN, whereas Streptococcus was differentially abundant in CAN compared with CIN. We then evaluated their diagnostic abilities. Testing in terms of diagnostic ability using the three genera revealed considerably high performance with an area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.982, 0.953, and 0.922. The current study suggests that the presence of Gardnerella and Streptococcus may be involved in the advancment of CC.

Experiment 1

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Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Atrayees on 2023-7-25

Curated date: 2021/03/19

Curator: Cynthia Anderson

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, WikiWorks, Atrayees

Subjects

Location of subjects: South Korea

Host species Species from which microbiome was sampled (if applicable): Homo sapiens

Body site Anatomical site where microbial samples were extracted from according to the Uber Anatomy Ontology: Vagina Distal oviductal region,Distal portion of oviduct,Vaginae,Vagina

Condition The experimental condition / phenotype studied according to the Experimental Factor Ontology: cervical glandular intraepithelial neoplasia cervical glandular intraepithelial neoplasia

Group 0 name Corresponds to the control (unexposed) group for case-control studies: healthy controls
Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies: CIN 2+
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group: Patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2 or higher
Group 0 sample size Number of subjects in the control (unexposed) group: 7
Group 1 sample size Number of subjects in the case (exposed) group: 8

Lab analysis

Sequencing type: 16S

16S variable region One or more hypervariable region(s) of the bacterial 16S gene: V3

Sequencing platform Manufacturer and experimental platform used for quantifying microbial abundance: Ion Torrent

Statistical Analysis

Data transformation Data transformation applied to microbial abundance measurements prior to differential abundance testing (if any).

relative abundances

Statistical test

LEfSe

Significance threshold p-value or FDR threshold used for differential abundance testing (if any): 0.05
MHT correction Have statistical tests be corrected for multiple hypothesis testing (MHT)?: No
LDA Score above Threshold for the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) score for studies using the popular LEfSe tool: 7

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness: increased
Simpson Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species evenness: increased
Richness Number of species: increased

Signature 1

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Curated date: 2021/03/19

Curator: Cynthia Anderson

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, Atrayees

Source: Figure 2A, 2B, 2F

Description: Comparative analysis of vaginal microbiota profiles

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in CIN 2+

NCBI	Quality Control	Links
Gardnerella
Actinomycetota
Bacteroidota

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, Atrayees

Signature 2

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Reviewed Marked as Reviewed by Atrayees on 2023-7-25

Curated date: 2021/03/19

Curator: Cynthia Anderson

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, Atrayees

Source: Figure 2A, 2B, 2F

Description: Comparative analysis of vaginal microbiota profiles

Abundance in Group 1: decreased abundance in CIN 2+

NCBI	Quality Control	Links
Lactobacillaceae
Lactobacillus
Bacilli
Lactobacillales

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, Atrayees

Experiment 2

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Curated date: 2021/03/19

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Differences from previous experiment shown

Subjects

Condition The experimental condition / phenotype studied according to the Experimental Factor Ontology: cervical cancer cancer of uterine cervix,cervical neoplasm,cervix cancer,cervix uteri cancer,malignant cervical neoplasm,malignant cervical tumor,malignant cervix neoplasm,malignant cervix tumor,malignant cervix uteri neoplasm,malignant cervix uteri tumor,malignant neoplasm of cervix,malignant neoplasm of cervix uteri,malignant neoplasm of the cervix,malignant neoplasm of the cervix uteri,malignant neoplasm of the uterine cervix,malignant neoplasm of uterine cervix,malignant tumor of cervix,malignant tumor of cervix uteri,malignant tumor of the cervix,malignant tumor of the cervix uteri,malignant tumor of the uterine cervix,malignant tumor of uterine cervix,malignant uterine cervix neoplasm,malignant uterine cervix tumor,tumor of the cervix uteri,uterine cervical neoplasm,uterine cervix cancer,cervical cancer

Group 1 name Corresponds to the case (exposed) group for case-control studies: cervical cancer
Group 1 definition Diagnostic criteria applied to define the specific condition / phenotype represented in the case (exposed) group: Patients with cervical cancer

Lab analysis

Statistical Analysis

Data transformation Data transformation applied to microbial abundance measurements prior to differential abundance testing (if any).: Not specified

Alpha Diversity

Shannon Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species richness: unchanged
Simpson Estimator of species richness and species evenness: more weight on species evenness: unchanged
Richness Number of species: increased

Signature 1

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Curated date: 2021/03/19

Curator: Cynthia Anderson

Revision editor(s): Cynthia Anderson, Atrayees

Source: Figure 2C, 2D, 2F

Description: Comparative analysis of vaginal microbiota profiles

Abundance in Group 1: increased abundance in cervical cancer

NCBI	Quality Control	Links
Streptococcus
Streptococcaceae
Peptoniphilus
Finegoldia
Anaerococcus
Clostridia
Tissierellales
Prevotellaceae
Prevotella
Bacteroidales
Bacteroidia
Bacillota
Pseudomonadota