Evaluation of different diagnostic methods of bacterial vaginosis

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is an ecological disorder of the vaginal microbiota that affects millions of women annually, and is associated with numerous adverse health outcomes including pre-term birth and the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections. This study aimed to determine the incidence rate of bacterial vaginosis among women and examine the effect of some risk factors and demographic features on BV incidence. Also aimed to compare between the different methods of BV diagnosis. The results revealed that from the 100 patients, 33% were diagnosed as bacterial vaginosis, 23% were having candidiasis, 8% aerobic vaginitis, 3% trichomoniasis and 33% were normal. The highest number of BV positive cases was in the age group of (26-35)Yrs, 94% of the 33 BV positive cases were using vaginal douches and 94% were married. BV positive cases using IUD were equal to BV positive cases using hormonal contraceptives including injection and tablets (12/33, 36.4%). BV was diagnosed in 33%, 38%, 36%, 30% and 34% of patients using Gram stain, culture, Amsel criteria, BV Blue test ® and qPCR respectively. When the different diagnostic methods were compared to Gram stain as a gold standard, qPCR had the highest sensitivity, accuracy and negative predictive value while BV Blue test had the highest specificity and positive predictive value.