Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Clinical round-up
  1. Lewis J Haddow1,
  2. Sophie Herbert2
  1. 1Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research, Research Department of Infection & Population Health, University College London, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Genitourinary Medicine, Nottingham University Hospitals, Nottingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Lewis J Haddow, Department of Infection & Population Health, Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research, University College London, 4th floor, Mortimer Market Centre, Capper Street, London WC1E 6JB, UK; lewis.haddow{at}ucl.ac.uk

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Vaginal infections, a cause of serious morbidity

A Cochrane review concludes that asymptomatic screening for lower genital tract infection could prevent preterm birth (relative risk 0.55, 95% CI 0.41 to 0.75).1 Only one trial of moderate quality was suitable for inclusion.2 Three other trials were excluded on the basis that they were not true screening trials (the trials enrolled symptomatic as well as asymptomatic participants). The intervention of screening for vaginal Candida, Trichomonas vaginalis and bacterial vaginosis with a Gram stain at 15–20 gestational weeks in this Austrian study was considered to be cost-saving. This is not current practice in UK antenatal clinics, and implementing such a strategy would have implications for laboratory workload. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is contributing to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence public consultation on reducing preterm birth, announced in June 2015, …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Contributors Both authors contributed to the manuscript. On this occasion, the corresponding author contributed >50% of the work.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.