As a follow up to last Friday's blog post about how the vaginal flora changes over time, I wanted to call your attention to a nifty paper about the bacteria that are found in adolescent boys' urine and on the head of the penis (the corona). Bacterial colonization of the penis hasn't been as well studied as the flora of the vagina, and this research, which looked at young men both before and after they engaged in sexual activity, has some interesting potential implications for understanding the possible sexual transmission of BV from men to women, and vice versa.
First off, the study confirmed both that circumcised and uncircumcised men have different types of bacteria colonizing their coronas and that coronal bacteria colonies are not the same as the bacteria found in the urine/urethra. What was new about this research, however, was that the scientists also looked at what effect partner sex had on the various colonies of bacteria. Among other results, they discovered that BV-associated bacteria such as Mycoplasma and Ureaplasma were more commonly found in the urine of young men who had had sex.
I'm hoping that this research might spark some new interest in the possibility that BV might be sexually transmitted rather than just sexually associated. The evidence was always stronger for lesbian couples, but that may have been due the difficulty of accurately sampling the bacterial populations found in men rather than because there were different modes of transmission for the two groups.
Source: http://std.about.com/b/2012/05/28/inside-of-a-man.htm
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