Perspective on human papillomavirus infection treatment by vaginal microbiota

Abstract

Abstract Cervical cancer continues to be a major public health problem affecting middle‐aged women. Almost all cervical cancers are caused by infection of high‐risk human papillomaviruses (hr‐HPV), thus tremendous efforts have been paid to accelerate the clearance of HPV. Vaginal microbiota has been considered to play a vital role in the regulation of cervical health, including HPV clearance. Several studies have focused on the relief of HPV‐related indicators using various microbes from vaginal microbiota, but the mechanism underlined is not fully understood. This perspective summarizes the current in vitro and in vivo experiments as well as clinical trials on the applications of vaginal microbiota to treat HPV infection and proposes topics that can be studied in the future. It is expected that more studies on the mechanism of vaginal microbiota‐regulated HPV infection treatment using in vivo and in vitro models, as well as more clinical trials using various microbes for HPV clearance will be carried out in the future.

Keywords

• cervicovaginal microenvironment
• HPV clearance
• human papillomavirus (HPV) infection
• vaginal microbiota