Salivary ABO antigens and risk of microbial vaginosis

To investigate the effect of blood group ABO antigens on the risk of vaginosis.

The cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq, from April 2016 to June 2017. Two vaginal swabs and 1ml of stimulated saliva from women aged16-46 years were collected. The first swab was used for direct wet smear examination, while the second swab was cultured on aerobic and facultative anaerobic cultures on appropriate media. SPSS 25 was used for data analysis.

Of the 269 patients with a mean age of 30.7}6.2 years, 52(19.3%) were positive and 217(80.7%) were negative for ABO antigen. The duration of vaginosis symptoms were observed after 7-13 days in both positive and negative groups (p=0.24).The main symptom in women with positive ABO was vaginal pain, while it was a foul smelling vaginal discharge and itching in women with the negative status (p=0.0001).Single bacterial species growth was obtained from 32(61.5%) positive patients and 81(37.3%) negative patients.

ABO secretory status could increase defence against microbial vaginosis.