The Vaginal Microbiome: “Healthy” Differs with Ethnicity

The Vaginal Microbiome: “Healthy” Differs with Ethnicity

What is a “normal and healthy” microbiome seems to differ among individuals and ethnic groups.  One of the goals with the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was to characterize the healthy microbiome of different human body sites. The idea being that microbiome science needed to have a baseline of “normal and healthy” to compare to “dysbiotic and ill”. The ~200 individuals sampled for the HMP provided a surprising insight – there is no one healthy microbiome for a given site. Just as there are healthy people of a range of heights from 4’8” to 7’8”, so are there a range of healthy microbiome communities. However, the one body site thought to have a distinct microbiome across all women was the vaginal microbiome.

Where does your microbiome come from?

Where does your microbiome come from?

Sharon Muza at Lamaze International’s blog Science & Sensibility recently asked me to do a guest blog on the source of the human microbiome. My post – The Healthy birth: Dyad or Triad? Exploring Birth and the Microbiome – focuses on literature from the last few years identifying three potential sources: birth mode (vaginal or Cesarean), birth location (home, birth center, and hospital), and first foods (breastfeeding and/or formula). New findings that were especially interesting to me included