The person is Sara Novak.
Two people sharing a bed.
The images are by Tom Merton.
It appears that vaginal intercourse increases the activity of the vagina's immune system.
For up to five years, Sean Hughes and his colleagues at the University of Washington collected samples of vaginal and cervical fluids from 19 women in the US The participants reported when they had sex for the first time.
The team measured the levels of the immune system's cytokines, which alert the immune system to invaders. The cytokines went up after sexual intercourse.
The team looked at the data gathered in two similar studies of 95 women in Kenya and 93 women in Belgium. After engaging in vaginal intercourse for the first time, there was an increase in vaginal immune system activity. The studies didn't include trans men or non-binary people.
Hughes theorizes that sexual activity increases the vagina's exposure to differentbacteria. More immune cells and signals are sent by the immune system when there is new activity. The vagina may become a more mature immune environment.
The risk of sexually transmitted diseases wasn't looked at in the study. A group of women in South Africa have been shown to have an increased risk of contracting HIV. We shouldn't assume that the changes seen in the new study are bad according to Alison.
She doesn't want to assume that sexual changes are negative for adolescents.
According to the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, it is difficult to get this kind of information from young women. She applauds the effort that was made to obtain and compare the data from Belgium and Kenya to make the results more robust.
Kalia says that sexual intercourse will result in changes to immune mediators. Inflammation is an important part of the body's repair mechanisms.
Kalia says that the purpose of inflammation is to keep the vaginal flora free of infections.
The team hopes to have a better understanding of how changes in immune function affect women's risk of getting sexually transmitted infections.
The journal's title is "eLife."
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