Understanding vaginal microbiome dynamics pre- and post-vaccination: descriptive analysis in vaccine trial participants

The microbiome is composed of a diverse community of bacteria, viruses and fungi, which perform essential functions for human health. Each microbiome is characterized by a different composition. In the case of the vaginal microbiome, it is usually dominated by Lactobacillus. Low Lactobacillus conten...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Careta Borràs, Oriol
Tipo de recurso: tesis de maestría
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/152382
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10609/152382
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:microbiome
whole metagenome sequencing
HIV/AIDS
Bioinformatics -- TFM
Bioinformàtica -- TFM
Descripción
Sumario:The microbiome is composed of a diverse community of bacteria, viruses and fungi, which perform essential functions for human health. Each microbiome is characterized by a different composition. In the case of the vaginal microbiome, it is usually dominated by Lactobacillus. Low Lactobacillus content has been linked to premature birth, bacterial vaginosis, and increased risk of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV. At present, there are not many prevention strategies against HIV infection, one of them being the emergence of new vaccines, although these are not currently very effective. In this sense, it has been seen that the state of the microbiome can influence the quality of the immune responses elicited after the administration of a vaccine. For this reason, we decided to study the status of the vaginal microbiome in a group of women who had received a pre-exposure prophylaxis vaccine, and whether the application of this vaccine modified their microbiome composition. This master project started from the whole metagenome sequencing data from DNA obtained from vaginal swab samples and consisted of combining all the clinical and technical data with amplification data to subsequently perform a compositional analysis of the microbiome. After the analyses, it was seen that there are three dominant vaginotypes in the study patients, two of them related to a healthy microbiota and one of them with bacterial vaginosis, but no effect of the vaccine on microbiome composition has been observed.