Most women have experienced, or at least heard of, bacterial vaginosis (BV). One in three women of reproductive age is affected by the condition, which was previously viewed as an imbalance in the vaginal microbiome. BV—which can increase a woman's risk of miscarriage in all trimesters of pregnancy, of preterm birth, and of acquiring and transmitting other STIs—is typically treated with antibiotics like metronidazole or clindamycin for affected female patients, and is notorious for having a high recurrence rate of 60% to 80%. Most men, though, are not familiar with the condition.
Catriona Bradshaw, a clinician and Head of the Genital Microbiota & Mycoplasma Group at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, has studied BV over two decades to find more effective ways to treat it. She led a ground-breaking study published March 2025 in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that BV actually fits the profile of a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and that treating the male partner as well is key to preventing recurrence.
Bradshaw’s experience volunteering at an STI clinic in Malawi in 1998 vaulted her into a PhD in Sexual Health Medicine at the University of Melbourne and a career studying two particularly challenging STIs: mycoplasma genitalium and bacterial vaginosis. She pioneered a new strategy called resistance-guided therapy that raised the cure rate for mycoplasma genitalium, an emerging drug-resistant superbug.
Her research has informed international diagnosis and therapy guidelines for the World Health Organization, the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine, the CDC, and more. Her team wants to work with the manufacturer of the clindamycin cream used in their BV study to make the treatment more widely available to men.
Research into issues like BV, which fall under the umbrella category of women's health, is “still considered low priority in terms of all the other competing interests,” Bradshaw says. “There's a lot more work to be done but it's wonderful to have made a fairly significant inroad to help us disentangle what's going on more.”