Longitudinal analysis on the ecological dynamics of the cervicovaginal microbiome in hrHPV infection.

The cervicovaginal microbiome (CVM) is a dynamic continuous microenvironment that can be clustered in microbial community state types (CSTs) and is associated with women's cervical health. -depleted communities particularly associate with an increased susceptibility for persistence of high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) infections and progression of disease, but the long-term ecological dynamics of CSTs after hrHPV infection diagnosis remain poorly understood. To determine such dynamics, we examined the CVM of our longitudinal cohort of 141 women diagnosed with hrHPV infection at baseline with collected cervical smears at two timepoints six-months apart. Here we describe that the long-term microbiome dissimilarity has a positive correlation with microbial diversity at both visits and that women with high abundance and dominance for at baseline exhibit more similar microbiome composition at second visit than women with -depleted communities at baseline. We further show that the species and associate with CST changes between both visits. Lastly, we also observe that is associated with the stability of -depleted communities while is associated with the instability of -dominated communities. Our data suggest dynamic patterns of cervicovaginal CSTs during hrHPV infection, which could be potentially used to develop microbiome-based therapies against infection progression towards disease.