A patient arrives with a report she paid $159 for.
It lists dozens of bacteria living in her vagina, sorts her into a “community state type,” labels her microbiome “imbalanced,” and offers a plan of supplements to fix it. The sequencing is real science.
Most of the plan is not. The distance between those two things is now a fast-growing industry, and both clinicians and women should know exactly where it sits.
What the vaginal microbiome is
The vaginal microbiome is the community of bacteria that lives in the vagina. In most healthy women of reproductive age, one genus dominates: Lactobacillus. These bacteria make lactic acid, hold the pH low, and crowd out organisms that cause trouble.
