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Methods to study the female reproductive tract: focus on the immune system

Published on June 30, 2026   44 min

Other Talks in the Series: The Female Reproductive System: from Basic Science to Fertility Treatments

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0:00
Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Mimi Ghosh, an associate professor at the Department of Epidemiology at the Milken Institute School of Public Health in the George Washington University. Today, I will talk to you about the methods to study the female reproductive tract with a focus on the immune system.
0:19
Why is it important to study the female reproductive tract, which I will also refer to as FRT sometimes? It's important to study the female reproductive tract because more than 20 pathogens can infect the female reproductive tract, and sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, have a direct impact on sexual and reproductive health through stigmatization, infertility, cancers, and pregnancy complications. A major issue is drug resistance to all the STIs that actually have treatments, and this is a big burden worldwide.
0:53
In women, more than one million STIs can be acquired every day worldwide. Four of the STIs that are curable, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and trichomonas, each year, there's an estimated 374 million new infections. More than 500 million people 15-49 years are estimated to have a genital infection with herpes simplex virus. Then human papillomavirus infection is also a very serious one which has been associated with infertility and cervical cancer.
1:25
HIV in women is also a very big problem. Thirty-nine million people globally were living with HIV in 2022, and of them 53% were women and girls, so HIV does affect women disproportionately. Globally, 46% of all new HIV infections were among women and girls in 2022. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women accounted for more than 77% of new infections among young people aged 15-24 years, and the young girls in that age range, the 15-24 range, were more than three times as likely to acquire HIV than the young boys in that same age range. To understand the mechanisms by

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Methods to study the female reproductive tract: focus on the immune system

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