The Juno Study

Microbiomes are the community of bacteria and other microbes that live in and on us. Since the completion of the first part of the Human Microbiome Project in 2015, there’s been an explosion in our understanding of the importance of these communities for our wellbeing. These microbiomes can be found in our mouths, our guts and of course, our vaginas.

The vaginal microbiome is the community of microbes that live in the vagina. It’s made up of bacteria and other microbes and plays a huge role in our health and wellness.

The vaginal microbiome  is significantly implicated in over 30 major women’s health conditions. These include recurrent bacterial-vaginosis (a socially-debilitating condition affecting 10% of the global female population annually[1]) and preterm birth (the leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age[2]). By decoding the vaginal microbiome we can find solutions to under-addressed conditions which are currently unacceptably poorly-characterised, badly-diagnosed and inadequately-treated.  

Good question. The vaginal microbiome and its impact on women’s lives is only just being unravelled. This is partly because the enabling technologies that allow us to do this type of research have only recently come into existence to and well mostly because womxn’s health has always taken a back seat.

We tell you. From a simple vaginal swab that you take - think cotton bud, we can tell you exactly what your vaginal microbiome contains. We process the vaginal swab in our labs by extracting all the microbial DNA - that’s just the genetic makeup of the bacteria - and figure out exactly which microbes they belong to, what they’re known to do and what that means for you.The hard bit is what we’re good at - using bioinformatics and machine learning to give you the deepest insights you can get about just what’s down there. We then send you a report with simple explanations so that you know exactly where you stand.

Proactive management of vaginal wellness is paramount to avoiding downstream complications. Knowing what you’re working with is the first step.