Association of Vaginal Microbiota and Sociodemographic Factors With Cervical Human Papillomavirus in the Eastern Region of India

Prolonged exposure to the High-risk Human Papillomavirus (HPV) leads to the development of cervical carcinoma. Numerous factors aid in this virus's acquisition, persistence, and clearance. This study aims to determine the association of vaginal microbiota and socio-demographic factors with oncogenic HPV infections among women from Eastern region of India. Cervical scrapes and vaginal swab samples were collected from women (n = 300) having some gynecological complaints with informed consent. Cervical cytology and HPV types were screened among them. A subset of samples (n = 12) were subjected for next generation sequencing based 16S rRNA profiling to determine the vaginal bacterial diversity among the HPV-positive and HPV-negative women with normal cervical cytology. The taxonomic profiling, diversity and relative abundance of bacterial species were determined subsequently. With appropriate statistical tests, vaginal bacterial diversity along with socio-demographic risk factors was correlated with HPV infections. A PCR-based approach further detected the bacterial taxa that were exclusively present among the groups in the whole data set. HPV infection was identified among 11.60% of individuals, with the dominance of HPV18 (80%) among carcinogenic HPV. 16S rRNA profiling revealed that the HPV-positive group had lower abundance of Firmicutes phylum and higher abundance of Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria phyla than the HPV-negative group. A positive correlation between Genus Acinetobacter and HPV positivity was established, presenting higher susceptibility for oncogenic HPV16/18 (p = 0.016; relative mean abundance = 19.67). PCR-based detection of this genus in the whole data set (n = 300), a statistically significant association with oncogenic HPV16/18 infection (p ≤ 0.01, odds ratio (OR)= 22.48 [95% CI = 5.23-96.63]) was found. Among sociodemographic factors, Tobacco users (16.67%, 4/24; OR = 6.70 [95% CI: 1.86-24.18]; p = 0.001) and field-workers (15.79%, 3/19; OR = 5.67 [95% CI: 1.40-22.99]; p = 0.007) were associated with a higher risk of HPV18 infections. Assessment of geography-specific vaginal microbiota and other lifestyle induced risk factors might contribute to acquire chronic infection of oncogenic HPV and progression to cervical cancer.