Diagnostic concordance between Amsel’s criteria and the Nugent scoring method in the assessment of bacterial vaginosis
Apoorva Challa
A , Seema Sood B , Garima Kachhawa C , Ashish Datt Upadhyay D , Sada Nand Dwivedi D and Somesh Gupta A *
A Department of Dermatology and Venereology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
B Department of Microbiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
C Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
D Department of Biostatistics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
Sexual Health 18(6) 512-514 https://doi.org/10.1071/SH21149
Submitted: 4 August 2021 Accepted: 13 September 2021 Published: 17 December 2021
© 2021 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing
Abstract
Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is diagnosed by the microbiological Nugent scoring method or clinical Amsel’s criteria. Assessment of 404 vaginal samples (293 women) identified 110 (27.2%), 108 (26.7%) and 161 (39.9%) samples to be BV-positive using Nugent’s method, standard Amsel’s criteria and simplified Amsel’s criteria respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and kappa statistic (κ) for standard and simplified Amsel’s criteria were 71.8% (95% CI = 62.4–80.0), 90.1% (95% CI = 62.4–86.1), 0.62 (95% CI = 0.53–0.72) and 88.2% (95% CI = 80.6–93.6), 78.2% (95% CI = 73.1–82.8), 0.58 (95% CI = 0.49–0.67), respectively. A combination of vaginal pH and clue cells exhibited the highest concordance (κ = 0.64, 95% CI = 0.54–0.74) with Nugent’s method and may be used for simplified BV diagnosis.
Keywords: Amsel’s criteria, bacterial vaginosis, diagnostics, Nugent scoring method, reproductive health, sexual and reproductive health, vaginal dysbiosis, vaginal ecology, vaginal microbiota, women.
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