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      Vaginal Microbiome: Rethinking Health and Disease

      1 , 2 , 1
      Annual Review of Microbiology
      Annual Reviews

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          Abstract

          Vaginal microbiota form a mutually beneficial relationship with their host and have a major impact on health and disease. In recent years our understanding of vaginal bacterial community composition and structure has significantly broadened as a result of investigators using cultivation-independent methods based on the analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences. In asymptomatic, otherwise healthy women, several kinds of vaginal microbiota exist, the majority often dominated by species of Lactobacillus, while others are composed of a diverse array of anaerobic microorganisms. Bacterial vaginosis is the most common vaginal condition and is vaguely characterized as the disruption of the equilibrium of the normal vaginal microbiota. A better understanding of normal and healthy vaginal ecosystems that is based on their true function and not simply on their composition would help better define health and further improve disease diagnostics as well as the development of more personalized regimens to promote health and treat diseases.

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          Most cited references115

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          An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest.

          The worldwide obesity epidemic is stimulating efforts to identify host and environmental factors that affect energy balance. Comparisons of the distal gut microbiota of genetically obese mice and their lean littermates, as well as those of obese and lean human volunteers have revealed that obesity is associated with changes in the relative abundance of the two dominant bacterial divisions, the Bacteroidetes and the Firmicutes. Here we demonstrate through metagenomic and biochemical analyses that these changes affect the metabolic potential of the mouse gut microbiota. Our results indicate that the obese microbiome has an increased capacity to harvest energy from the diet. Furthermore, this trait is transmissible: colonization of germ-free mice with an 'obese microbiota' results in a significantly greater increase in total body fat than colonization with a 'lean microbiota'. These results identify the gut microbiota as an additional contributing factor to the pathophysiology of obesity.
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            Microbial ecology: human gut microbes associated with obesity.

            Two groups of beneficial bacteria are dominant in the human gut, the Bacteroidetes and the Firmicutes. Here we show that the relative proportion of Bacteroidetes is decreased in obese people by comparison with lean people, and that this proportion increases with weight loss on two types of low-calorie diet. Our findings indicate that obesity has a microbial component, which might have potential therapeutic implications.
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              Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome.

              Our knowledge of species and functional composition of the human gut microbiome is rapidly increasing, but it is still based on very few cohorts and little is known about variation across the world. By combining 22 newly sequenced faecal metagenomes of individuals from four countries with previously published data sets, here we identify three robust clusters (referred to as enterotypes hereafter) that are not nation or continent specific. We also confirmed the enterotypes in two published, larger cohorts, indicating that intestinal microbiota variation is generally stratified, not continuous. This indicates further the existence of a limited number of well-balanced host-microbial symbiotic states that might respond differently to diet and drug intake. The enterotypes are mostly driven by species composition, but abundant molecular functions are not necessarily provided by abundant species, highlighting the importance of a functional analysis to understand microbial communities. Although individual host properties such as body mass index, age, or gender cannot explain the observed enterotypes, data-driven marker genes or functional modules can be identified for each of these host properties. For example, twelve genes significantly correlate with age and three functional modules with the body mass index, hinting at a diagnostic potential of microbial markers.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Annual Review of Microbiology
                Annu. Rev. Microbiol.
                Annual Reviews
                0066-4227
                1545-3251
                October 13 2012
                October 13 2012
                : 66
                : 1
                : 371-389
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201; email: ,
                [2 ]Department of Biological Sciences and the Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844; email:
                Article
                10.1146/annurev-micro-092611-150157
                3780402
                22746335
                6d3a735b-5985-4d7f-a84f-707826909532
                © 2012
                History

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