Diagnostic concordance between Amsel's criteria and the Nugent scoring method in the assessment of bacterial vaginosis

Apoorva Challa; Seema Sood; Garima Kachhawa; Ashish Datt Upadhyay; Sada Nand Dwivedi; Somesh Gupta

doi:10.1071/SH21149

Diagnostic concordance between Amsel's criteria and the Nugent scoring method in the assessment of bacterial vaginosis

Sex Health. 2022 Jan;18(6):512-514. doi: 10.1071/SH21149.

Authors

Apoorva Challa¹, Seema Sood², Garima Kachhawa³, Ashish Datt Upadhyay⁴, Sada Nand Dwivedi⁴, Somesh Gupta¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Dermatology and Venereology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
² Department of Microbiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
³ Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.
⁴ Department of Biostatistics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India.

PMID: 34914580
DOI: 10.1071/SH21149

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.

Publication types

Editorial
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Female
Humans
Research Design
Vagina / microbiology
Vaginosis, Bacterial* / diagnosis
Vaginosis, Bacterial* / microbiology