Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

by Ellie
(Dallas, TX)

Ellie's Statement
BV does NOT lead to PID and it's not an STD, should you think it is. It can lead to pre-term labor, but it won't spread to baby and is otherwise, just a nuisance.

You need to check your facts before going around scaring people.



My reply
I'm sorry you feel I'm scaring people, Ellie, however I do check my facts and I stand by what I wrote.

What I wrote was "Bacterial vaginosis is associated with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)or endometritis.1"

You'll see that I supplied a reference. This is so a reader does not need to simply take my word for this but is able to check the facts for themselves.

The reference is:

Bacterial vaginosis and human immunodeficiency virus infection (Gregory T Spear, Elizabeth St John, and M Reza Zariffard from the Department of Immunology/Microbiology, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612 USA)
AIDS Res Ther. 2007; 4: 25. Published online 2007 October 22. doi: 10.1186/1742-6405-4-25.

They state: "BV is associated with an increased risk of infections by HIV and some other organisms as discussed below, as well as with increased risk of preterm birth, which is a leading cause of infant death in the United States. Treatment of BV can reduce preterm birth in high risk cases. BV is also associated with miscarriage and pelvic inflammatory disease."

You might also like to check this study.

Bacterial vaginosis and anaerobic bacteria are associated with endometritis. (Haggerty CL, Hillier SL, Bass DC, Ness RB; PID Evaluation and Clinical Health study investigators.)
Clin Infect Dis. 2004 Oct 1;39(7):990-5. Epub 2004 Sep 2.

They state: "BACKGROUND: Chlamydia trachomatis and/or Neisseria gonorrhoeae account for approximately one-third to one-half of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) cases. Thus, up to 70% of cases have an unknown, nongonococcal/nonchlamydial microbial etiology.

METHODS: We investigated the associations of N. gonorrhoeae, C. trachomatis, bacterial vaginosis, anaerobic bacteria, facultative bacteria, and lactobacilli with endometritis among 278 women with complete endometrial histology and culture from the PID Evaluation and Clinical Health Study.

RESULTS: Women with acute endometritis were less likely to have H(2)O(2)-producing Lactobacillus species (odds ratio OR, 0.1; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.01-0.8) and more likely to be infected with C. trachomatis (OR, 16.2; 95% CI, 4.6-56.6), N. gonorrhoeae (OR, 11.6; 95% CI, 4.5-29.9), diphtheroids (OR, 5.0; 95% CI, 2.1-12.2), black-pigmented gram-negative rods (OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.4-7.0), and anaerobic gram-positive cocci (OR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.0-4.3) and to have bacterial vaginosis (OR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.3-4.3).

CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that bacterial vaginosis-associated organisms are frequent among women with PID. Because these organisms were strongly associated with endometritis, we recommend that all women with PID be treated with regimens that include metronidazole."

There are dozens more studies. A few you do have to pay to be able to read but most are freely available.

Researchers are continually finding out more and more and I'm sure that things we take as fact now, may not be in another decade. But at the moment there definitely is a link between BV and PID.

I did not state it was an STD. I did not state that it spreads to the baby.

We agree it can lead to pre-term labor and that reason alone should be sufficient reason to take having BV while pregnant seriously.

Many women, myself included, feel that BV is more than "just a nuisance". It can have a devastating effect on a woman's social and sexual life.

So Ellie, we are going to have to agree to differ on this one. If you would like to give me the references which state that BV is not associated with PID I would be happy to print them.

I'm sure we both agree that keeping women informed is the priority.