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Received Jun 22, 2017; Revised Oct 9, 2017; Accepted Oct 22, 2017
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Cervical microbiota play a prominent role in women’s reproductive health, which is influenced by numerous factors including age, ethnicity, genetic factors, cultural and economic factors, personal hygiene, sexual activity, and environmental conditions [1, 2]. Cervical microbiota are liable to change throughout a woman’s lifetime (birth, puberty, and menopause) [3]. Such changes in vaginal microbial flora have serious consequences such as prevention of fertilization and induction of spontaneous abortion in pregnant women, as well as increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight [4–8]. Spontaneous abortion prior to 20 weeks is a common adverse outcome of pregnancy. Moreover, spontaneous abortion and other adverse pregnancy outcomes have been traced to be associated with bacteria and viruses infection [9, 10]. A recent study using next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques demonstrated a vaginal microbiota difference between preterm delivery and normal spontaneous delivery [11], and also there is evidence on cervical microbiota associations with pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, and obesity [12–15]. However, the epidemiological data on the potential association between cervical microbiota and spontaneous abortion has been rarely reported and is lacking. The objective of this study was to (i) determine the cervical microbial composition in different abortion samples and to (ii) investigate the correlation between spontaneous abortion and cervical microbes in Korean women.
2. Methods
2.1. Subject Selection and Sample Collection
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the National...