High risk HPV-positive women cervicovaginal microbial profiles in a Greek cohort: a retrospective analysis of the GRECOSELF study

Electra Sofou; Glykeria Gkoliou; Nikolaos Pechlivanis; Konstantinos Pasentsis; Kimon Chatzistamatiou; Fotis Psomopoulos; Theodoros Agorastos; Kostas Stamatopoulos

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1292230

High risk HPV-positive women cervicovaginal microbial profiles in a Greek cohort: a retrospective analysis of the GRECOSELF study

Front Microbiol. 2023 Nov 30:14:1292230. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1292230. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Applied Biosciences, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloniki, Greece.
² Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupoli, Greece.
³ Department of Genetics, Development and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
⁴ 1st Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Papageorgiou General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
⁵ St. Luke's Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
⁶ Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Increasing evidence supports a role for the vaginal microbiome (VM) in the severity of HPV infection and its potential link to cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. However, a lot remains unclear regarding the precise role of certain bacteria in the context of HPV positivity and persistence of infection. Here, using next generation sequencing (NGS), we comprehensively profiled the VM in a series of 877 women who tested positive for at least one high risk HPV (hrHPV) type with the COBAS^® 4,800 assay, after self-collection of a cervico-vaginal sample. Starting from gDNA, we PCR amplified the V3-V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene and applied a paired-end NGS protocol (Illumina). We report significant differences in the abundance of certain bacteria compared among different HPV-types, more particularly concerning species assigned to Lacticaseibacillus, Megasphaera and Sneathia genera. Especially for Lacticaseibacillus, we observed significant depletion in the case of HPV16, HPV18 versus hrHPVother. Overall, our results suggest that the presence or absence of specific cervicovaginal microbial genera may be linked to the observed severity in hrHPV infection, particularly in the case of HPV16, 18 types.

Keywords: HPV; Lacticaseibacillus; cervical microbiome; next generation sequencing (NGS); vaginal microbiome.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The research was supported in part by the project “CerHPVix: an integrated biomolecular approach towards innovative triage of high-risk HPV positive women for the prevention of cervical cancer”, funded by Roche Hellas S. A. (2019–2021); by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE (GenOptics, project code: T2E1 K-00407).