Study casts light on insidious disease

CATRIONA Bradshaw's interest in women's health received a giant boost when she was working with her partner in Malawi in the late 1990s.

The young doctor volunteered in the thousand-bed Blantyre Hospital when the area was in the grip of HIV.

“I remember turning up for work each morning and there were 300 people queuing, some of whom had walked for days to get there,” the specialist in sexual health recalls.

These days one of Dr Bradshaw's principal interests is the lesser-known, but insidious condition bacterial vaginosis, the most common genital disease in women. Although the considerable health dangers it poses are documented, its cause has not yet been identified and treatments often fail.

This is a problem, because in women who have it, the rate of obstetric difficulties doubles, as does the risk of miscarriage, together with an increased incidence in pelvic inflammatory disease.

“It does not cause symptoms in at least 50 per cent of women who have it and for those who have symptoms, the most common are an abnormal discharge and odor,” Dr Bradshaw, an NHMRC research fellow at Monash University, said.

She is attempting to illuminate some of the mysteries of the condition with a new study which will assess and track 500 female university students.

The study will look at the prevalence of BV within that population and see whether it can be associated with sexual or contraceptive practices.

Testing for the condition is simple: a vaginal swab is analysed under a microscope. In women with BV there is a striking absence of the health-maintaining lacto-bacilli which should abound.

Instead, there is a range of other bacteria. “The problem is we don't know if any of those are the causative agent of BV or secondary invaders after the lacto-bacilli dropped off,” Dr Bradshaw said.

The study is being funded by a $20,000 fellowship she was awarded last year from L'Oreal Australia.

Australian-born professor Elizabeth Blackburn has been named the 2008 L'OREAL-UNESCO laureate for Women in Science, for North America, a $US100,000 ($107,000) award.

Based at the University of California, Professor Blackburn is recognised as one of the world's leading biomedical researchers and will be honoured in Paris today for the discovery of the nature and maintenance of chromosome ends and their roles in cancer and ageing.