Sexual wellness experts estimate that, worldwide, an STI newly infects 450 million people every year. However, researchers at the Monash Institute of Medical Research have found that a sexually transmitted infection (STI), such as Chlamydia and herpes simplex virus (HSV), is more likely to affect some women’s wellbeing than others.
The study’s scientists, lead researcher Professor Paul Hertzog, Director of MIMR’s Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases, and his team including Ka Yee Fung and Niamh Mangan, have discovered that a certain protein in the female reproductive tract protects against STIs. Dubbed Interferon epsilon (IFNe), the protein plays an important part in protecting you against infections, and this finding, published in the journal Science, could lead to physicians being able determine whether you are more or less susceptible to disease such as STIs, to boost your protective immunity, or even treat STIs or other inflammatory diseases.
Professor Hertzog explained, ‘One way this protein is unusual is because of the way it’s produced. Most proteins protecting us against infection are produced only after we’re exposed to a virus or bacteria. But this protein is produced normally and is instead regulated by hormones so its levels change during the oestrous cycle (an animal’s menstrual cycle) and is switched off at implantation in pregnancy and at other times like menopause.’
‘Some of these times when normal IFNe is lowest, correlate with when women are most susceptible to STIs so this might be an important link to new therapeutic opportunities,’ he continued. ‘IFNe follows different rules to normal immuno-modulatory proteins, and therefore this might also be important to vaccines and the way they’re formulated to boost our protective immunity. Since this protein boosts female reproductive tract immune responses, it’s likely, although we haven’t addressed it directly, that this finding will be important for other infectious diseases like HIV and HPV and other diseases,’ he added.
The professor said that STIs are a critical global health and socioeconomic problem, and he hopes to work towards clinical studies within the next five years, to tackle some of these issues. He added that he would like to investigate how the findings could be applied across other diseases including cancer, female reproductive tract related disorders including endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease, and other non reproductive tract diseases.
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