Comparison of PCR and culture methods to determine the prevalence of Mycoplasma hominis in woman's endocervical samples referred to Infertility Center of Hamadan Fatemieh Hospital in 2016

The Mycoplasma Hominis bacterium lives on in the female reproductive system. Recent studies have shown that the presence of this bacterium is associated with disorders such as vaginosis, infertility, abortion and preterm labor. This study was performed with aim to determine the frequency of Mycoplasma hominis in women referred to Infertility Clinic of Hamadan Fatemieh Hospital.
This epidemiologic-descriptive study was performed on 234 patients referred to the infertility clinic of Hamadan Fatemieh Hospital in 2016. Screening was performed using swabs from the endocervix of 234 female patients who had at least one of the symptoms of vaginosis, infertility, abortion and preterm labor. The culture medium was removed by filtration and the PCR molecular technique was used to trace the 16s rRNA gene as two methods for detection of bacteria. Data was analyzed by SPSS software and McNemar's test. P The frequency of Mycoplasma hominis in both methods was 13.7%. The correlation coefficient between culture and PCR methods was relatively desirable for detection of this bacterium (k=0.5). 41 patients (24.4%) with history of at least one abortion and 148 (14.2%) with vaginosis were diagnosed as positive Mycoplasma agar. The highest prevalence of Mycoplasma hominis was observed in the age range of 30-39 years.
Although the PCR molecular technique has high sensitivity to diagnose Mycoplasma hominis, but the modified culture method has an acceptable sensitivity to detect this bacterium.