FIG 4.

BV-induced MMPs are enzymatically active and damage endocervical mucosa. MMP enzymatic activity, presented as log₁₀ relative fluorescence units (RFU), of four separate batches of CM collected from mock- or bacterium-treated End1 or A2EN cells (A) or healthy CVF samples versus BV CVF samples (B). Polarized A2EN cells were treated topically with 1 μg/ml (C) or 5 μg/ml (D) MMP10 or a matched concentration of BSA (control) for 72 h. Data are presented as %TEER (TEER_{72 h}/TEER_{0 h}) for 4 independent experiments (C) and 3 independent experiments (D), all performed in duplicates. Connecting lines depict experimental pairs. *, P < 0.05 for two-tailed paired Student’s t tests (A, C, and D) and one-tailed unpaired t test (B). Error bars represent SEMs.