Shifts in bacterial abundance induced by Cu-IUD initiation are tightly correlated with the abundance of several key cytokines
We measured the concentrations of 27 cytokines in cervicovaginal fluid (Tanko et al.) and assessed the relationship between vaginal microbiota and cytokine concentrations. To link shifts in the bacterial microbiota to alterations in cytokine concentration, we regressed the sum of the inferred concentrations of taxa significantly altered by Cu-IUD use after 6 months of use against the concentrations of the 26 measured cytokines that passed our quality controls. In addition to correlating strongly with Nugent score (Fig. 