a male sexual partner of a woman with bacterial vaginosis is not recommended. probiotics a 2009 cochrane review found tentative but insufficient evidence for probiotics as a treatment for bv. a 2014 review reached the same conclusion. a 2013 review found some evidence supporting the use of probiotics during pregnancy. the preferred probiotics for bv are those containing high doses of lactobacilli (around 109 cfus) given in the vagina. intravaginal administration is preferred to taking them by mouth. prolonged repetitive courses of treatment appear to be more promising than short courses. the lack of effectiveness of commercially available lactobacillus probiotics may be because most do not actually contain vaginal lactobacilli strains. lactin-v is a live biopharmaceutical medication containing the vaginally important lactobacillus crispatus which is under development for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis and recurrent urinary tract infections. it has shown initial effectiveness in considerably reducing recurrence of bacterial vaginosis following antibiotic treatment. lactin-v is not yet food and drug administration (fda)-approved or commercially available. antiseptics topical antiseptics, for example dequalinium chloride, policresulen, hexetidine or povidone-iodine vaginal suppositories may be applied, if the risk of ascending infections is low (outside of pregnancy and in immunocompetent people without histories of upper genital tract infections). one study found that vaginal irrigations with hydrogen peroxide (3%) resulted in a slight improvement but this was much less than with the use of oral metronidazole. intravaginal boric acid in conjunction with other medications may be helpful in the treatment of recurrent bv. tol-463, a formulation of boric acid enhanced with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (edta), is under development as an intravaginal medication for the treatment of bv and has shown preliminary effectiveness. epidemiology bv is the most common infection of the vagina in women of reproductive age. the percentage of women affected at any given time varies between 5% and 70%. bv is most common in parts of africa, and least common in asia and europe. in the united states, about 30% of those between the ages of 14 and 49 are affected. rates vary considerably between ethnic groups within a country.