Research progress of the application of metagenomics technology in female reproductive tract diseases / 中华预防医学杂志

ABSTRACT

In recent years, many studies have found that vaginal microbiota is closely related to female reproductive tract diseases. However, traditional microbial culture technology has the defects of long culture cycle and most microorganisms cannot be cultured. The development of metagenomics technique has broken the limitations of culture technology, and has been gradually applied to the study of vaginal microorganisms with the characteristics of high throughput, short time, identification of microbial population structure and gene function. It also provides technical support for elucidating the relationship between vaginal microbiota and female reproductive tract diseases. This article mainly introduces the metagenomics techniques and their applications in prevention, screening and diagnosis of common female reproductive tract diseases, and discusses their promising development and limitations to be overcome.