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Levels of immune strategy proteins successful the vagina summation aft having vaginal intercourse for the archetypal time, suggesting the assemblage is responding to being exposed to caller bacteria
Health 7 November 2022By Sara Novak
A mates sharing a bed Tom Merton/Getty Images
Engaging successful vaginal intercourse for the archetypal clip appears to summation the enactment of the vagina’s immune system, possibly owed to accrued vulnerability to bacteria.
Sean Hughes astatine the University of Washington successful Seattle and his colleagues gathered samples of cervical and vaginal fluids from 19 women successful the US each 3 months for up to 5 years. The participants besides reported erstwhile they had vaginal intercourse for the archetypal clip during the study.
The squad measured the levels of immune strategy proteins called cytokines, which nonstop messages to 1 another, alerting the immune strategy to imaginable invaders. “After intersexual intercourse, the cytokines we measured each went up,” says Hughes.
Although 19 women is lone a tiny sample, the squad besides looked astatine information gathered successful 2 akin studies of 95 women successful Kenya and 93 women successful Belgium. All 3 studies showed across-the-board increases successful vaginal immune strategy enactment aft engaging successful vaginal intercourse for the archetypal time. None of the studies included trans men oregon non-binary people.
It is unclear wherefore these immune changes happen, but Hughes suggests that intersexual enactment increases the vagina’s vulnerability to antithetic bacteria. The immune strategy recognises this caller enactment and, arsenic a result, sends much immune cells and signals much frequently. “It could beryllium portion of the vagina becoming a much mature immune environment,” says Hughes.
The survey didn’t look astatine whether these immune changes altered fertility, oregon the hazard of sexually transmitted diseases. Other research has shown that accrued inflammation oregon elevated concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines summation the hazard of contracting HIV successful a cohort of women successful South Africa. Hughes’s workfellow Alison Roxby, besides astatine the University of Washington, says that we shouldn’t presume that the changes the caller survey saw are bad.
“There’s a batch of rhetoric saying that intersexual behaviour has risky consequences for adolescents, but we don’t privation to presume that these changes are negative,” she says.
Obtaining this benignant of accusation from young women is hard due to the fact that of societal taboo, says Namarta Kalia astatine the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, who wasn’t progressive successful the study. She applauds the effort that went into obtaining and comparing the information from Belgium and Kenya to marque the results much robust, but says the result isn’t peculiarly surprising.
“It’s evident that intersexual intercourse volition effect successful changes to immune mediators, arsenic an speech of microbiota betwixt 2 partners is involved,” says Kalia. “Inflammation is an integral portion of the body’s physiological repair mechanics unless it remains unresolved.”
But successful astir cases, the intent of inflammation is to “maintain vaginal homeostasis” erstwhile the microbiome is maintained by a big of bully bacteria protecting it from infection, says Kalia.
In the future, the squad hopes to person a amended knowing of however changes successful immune relation affects women’s hazard of acquiring sexually transmitted infections.
Journal reference: eLife, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.78565
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