Table 5.

Review of studies addressing the vaginal microbial communities at the third trimester of pregnancy

Authors	Country	Type of study and methodology	Study characteristics	Most abundant taxa
Avershina et al. (2017)	Norway	Randomized double blind clinical trial V3–V4 hypervariable region of the 16 S rRNA	256 pregnant women with term gestation	L. iners, L. crispatus, Enterobacteriaceae and Prevotella
Chu et al. (2017)	USA	Prospective cohort study V5–V3 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene	81 pregnant women with term gestation	Lactobacillus spp., Prevotella spp., Streptococcus spp., Corynebacterium spp.
MacIntyre et al. (2015)	UK	Longitudinal study V1–V2 hypervariable regions of 16S rRNA gene	42 pregnant women with term gestation; 23 (54.8%) White, 5 (11.9%) Black; 13 (31%) Asian	Lactobacillus crispatus, L. iners, L. jensenii, L. gasseri, Prevotella spp.
Bisanz et al. (2015)	Tanzania	Longitudinal open-label study V4 hypervariable region of 16S rRNA gene	56 pregnant women, 53 with term gestation	Lactobacillus spp., Prevotella spp., Gardnerella spp., Sneathia spp.
Romero et al. (2014a)	USA	Retrospective case–control longitudinal study V1–V2 hypervariable regions of 16S rRNA gene	22 pregnant women with term gestation; 19 (86%) African American, 2 (9%) White, 1 (5%) Hispanic	L. iners, L. crispatus, Atopobium vaginae, Lactobacillus, L. Jensenii
Romero et al. (2014b)	USA	Nested case–control study V1-V3 hypervariable regions of 16S rRNA gene	72 pregnant women with term gestation; 62 (86.1%) African American, 4 (5.6%) White, 6 (8.3%) Others	L. iners, L. crispatus, Gardnerella vaginalis, L. Jensenii, BVAB1
Hernández-Rodríguez et al. (2011)	Mexico	Transversal study V3 hypervariable region of 16S rRNA gene	23 pregnant women with term gestation	L. acidophilus, L. iners, Ureaplasma urealyticum, L. gasseri, BVAB1
This work	Brazil	Cohort study V4 hypervariable region of 16S rRNA gene	27 pregnant women with term gestation	L. iners, Lactobacillus, Pseudomonas lini, G. vaginalis, Prevotella copri