About the Authors

Sujatha Srinivasan

ssriniva@fhcrc.org (SS); dfredric@fhcrc.org (DNF)

Affiliation Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Congzhou Liu

Affiliation Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Caroline M. Mitchell

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Tina L. Fiedler

Affiliation Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Katherine K. Thomas

Affiliation Center for AIDS and STDs, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Kathy J. Agnew

Affiliation Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Jeanne M. Marrazzo

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

David N. Fredricks

ssriniva@fhcrc.org (SS); dfredric@fhcrc.org (DNF)

Affiliations Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, United States of America, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America, Department of Microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Competing Interests

D. N. Fredricks and T. L. Fiedler have developed intellectual property related to the use of PCR for the diagnosis of BV. Refer to US patent 7625704 on use of PCR for diagnosis of BV. No products to report. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SS JMM DNF. Performed the experiments: SS CL CMM TLF KJA. Analyzed the data: SS CMM TLF KKT JMM DNF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DNF. Wrote the paper: SS CL CMM TLF KKT KJA JMM DNF.