International Women's Day: vaginas for science

As you know, Fairy Positron is a big fan of more women in science, but of course not only on the scientists' side. Because women (and minority groups) are often underrepresented in scientific research, things are sometimes missed (and, e.g., it took scientists until 1998 to find out that the clitoris looks more like a penguin than a pea ;-)).

For that reason, today we are donating 10% of our sales to Isala.

What is Isala?

Isala is a citizenscience project of the UAntwerpen that wants to break the taboo around vaginal health and better understand the vaginal microbiome. In short, Isala wants to know what lives in the vagina, and you can take that literally.

Why?

The vagina contains millions of bacteria that play a crucial role in health. They are incredibly important to protect against infections, bladder infections, STDs, ... and Isala suspects that they also play a major role in fertility and healthy pregnancies. Only ... that is not yet certain. Because until now, scientific research has often been a man's world and so there has been little interest in the vaginal microbiome. Isala wants to change this.

How?

Isala collected samples from more than 3,000 women in 2020 to examine their vaginal microbiome. They use these to read microbial DNA via sequencing to see which bacteria thrive. Among other things, Isala wants to investigate how contraception, hormones, nutrition and hygiene affect the vaginal microbiome, how the dynamics of this microbiome work and see if the findings can help forensic investigations.

And now?

Isala's ultimate dream is to help women who have symptoms with science-based therapies and advice. They do this by growing thousands of vaginal lactobacilli and finding out which ones have potential as medicines. A range of probiotic care products has already emerged from the same lab as Isala, medicines will hopefully be the next step.

Want to know more?

You can find out more about Isala's operation on their website( you can alsosupport them directly financially ). You can also follow them on Instagram and Twitter.