Scientists have for the first time grown vaginal skin cells outside the body to better identify the good bacteria that protect women from HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the Oak Crest Institute of Science in Pasadena, California, set out to study the relationship between the skin cells and the "good" bacteria.
The health of the human vagina depends on a symbiotic/mutually beneficial relationship with "good" bacteria that live on its surface feeding on products produced by vaginal skin cells.
These good bacteria, in turn, create a physical and chemical barrier to bad bacteria and viruses including HIV.
The researchers are the first to grow human vaginal skin cells in a dish in a manner that creates surfaces that support colonisation by the complex good and bad communities of bacteria collected from women during routine gynecological exams.
The bacteria communities have never before been successfully grown outside a human.
By using this model of the human vagina, researchers discovered that certain bacterial communities alter the way HIV infects and replicates.
Their laboratory model will allow careful and controlled evaluation of the complex community of bacteria to ultimately identify those species that weaken the defenses against HIV.
The research group led by Richard Pyles at UTMB also indicated that this model "will provide the opportunity to study the way that these mixed species bacterial communities change the activity of vaginal applicants including over-the-counter products like douches and prescription medications and contraceptives."
The team documented the potential for their system to better evaluate current and future antimicrobial drugs in terms of how they interact with "good and bad" bacteria.
In their current studies a bacterial community associated with a symptomatic condition called bacterial vaginosis substantially reduced the antiviral activity of one of the leading anti-HIV medicines.
Conversely, vaginal surfaces occupied by healthy bacteria and treated with the antiviral produced significantly less HIV than those vaginal surfaces without bacteria treated with the same antiviral.
The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
