Vaginal symptoms and bacterial vaginosis (BV): how useful is self-report? Development of a screening tool for predicting BV status

Abstract

SUMMARYVaginal complaints compel an evaluation of bacterial vaginosis (BV), however, many cases of BV are asymptomatic. We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of vaginal symptoms in the diagnosis of BV and examined the utility of creating a BV screening tool using clinical, behavioural and demographic characteristics. A total of 1916 pregnant women were included in this analysis. In total, 757 women screened positive for BV and over one third of BV-positive women presented without any lower genital tract symptoms (39·4%). African American race, abnormal vaginal odour, and smoking were independently related to BV positivity. A BV screening tool including these three factors was fairly predictive of BV status with the area under the ROC curve equal to 0·669. This three-item prediction rule may be useful in identifying high- risk pregnant women in need of BV screening and, given the high specificity, accurately identify the group of BV-negative pregnant women.