As crucial as gut health but not talked about. The vital role of vagina microbiomes

It plays a vital role for women’s wellbeing, reproductive health, sex life and can even be a warning sign for premature labour.

But despite compelling evidence about the impact of a healthy vaginal microbiome, Catherine Slogrove spends an inordinate amount of time just explaining – particularly to men – what it is.

Businesswoman Catherine Slogrove funded research for an Australian-first product to “rebalance” the vaginal microbiome.Credit: Nikki Short

“It’s a combination of bacteria and fungi that inhabit and live in the vagina and, in a healthy state, it keeps everything stable; it works like a well-balanced machine,” says Slogrove. “The stability of the vaginal microbiome helps keep infection at bay.”

Unlike the gut microbiome, vaginal microbiome awareness is low, she says, because it has not been as extensively studied until recent years: “This goes back to a legacy of inherent sexism in the health industry.”

“It was only in 1994 that women started being commonly included in clinical trials,” says Slogrove. The business owner became interested in what may help women, including herself, to reduce common infections such as thrush.

She learned that imbalance in the vaginal microbiome has been linked with a higher risk of pre-term birth or miscarriage, sexually transmitted infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, thrush and urinary tract infections. Finding something that boosted vaginal health became personal.

Catherine Slogrove was supported in her development of Australia’s first vaginal probiotic pessary by the University of New South Wales Founders program, whose senior manager of startups is Dina Titkova (left).Credit: Nikki Short

“I had had lived experience with vaginal infections, I experienced chronic symptoms and went to nine GPs and two gynaecologists and was struggling to find answers around my health,” Slogrove says.

“There was so much shame associated with it, and it was really impacting my relationships, my work, my sense of wellbeing and my confidence as well, feeling these physical symptoms.”

Having discovered the importance of the delicate “micro-ecosystem” of vaginal microbes, Slogrove put $300,000 into research and development of vaginal probiotics that can be administered by pessary.

She secured $90,000 from the University of New South Wales Founders Health 10x accelerator, which supports scalable ideas by university alumni, and hired pharmaceutical technologist and researcher Dr Nada Millen to put a year’s research in to the most effective formulation of lactobacillus.

As Slogrove prepares to scale up production of the Amelia Bio pessary, one challenge has been getting the message across to some men, “firstly, because of the stigma around vaginal health … and often they don’t see it as a problem”, she said.

“It can be horrible pitching to men who just don’t get it. But whenever you start opening up about it, other people open up. One thing I hear from men is, ‘my wife has got a urinary tract infection, or BV [bacterial vaginosis] and she blames me for it’.”

Gynaecologist and associate professor Leo Leader, who provided some unpaid advice in the development of the pessary, said vaginal probiotics were effective because lactic acid prevents a range of organisms from overgrowing.

Research had established that women who had complications in pregnancy, such as premature labour, had different microbiomes than those without complications.

“By screening these microbiomes you can predict which women are at risk of developing early labour,” he said.

Dina Titkova, senior start-up manager at UNSW Founders, says Slogrove’s project is an example of women taking action to address gendered health needs.

”A common thing for women founders, and founders doing women’s health, is to be told they’re not fundable,” Titkova said. “We propose that Australia can be a leader in women’s health globally and a women’s health incubator.”

Professor Wilhelmina Huston, molecular microbiologist and researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, said the vaginal microbiome was an example of an aspect of women’s health that is important but lacks awareness due to “discomfort” talking about it.

“We need to make it more acceptable, it’s a fact of life for all of us that we need a healthy gut microbiome, and women also need a healthy vaginal microbiome,” said Huston.

She provided scientific advice regarding the pessary, which launched this month.

Huston said she hopes the vaginal microbiome is more openly discussed.

“The vaginal microbiome might be the next frontier we’re willing to talk about – even in a newspaper.”

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