For the past two years, the 29-year-old dancer from Ohio has been suffering from severe pelvic pain and vaginal odor. “It was like a terrible 8/10 heartache,” she says. “I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t even work a desk job. It was bad.”
When she visited the doctors, she told them what she thought was the cause: an allergic reaction to soy oil in a bowl of water she was swimming in during a pirate-themed dinner theater show. But they didn’t believe her. “They tried to fix it with antibiotics,” she says. “And they did nothing.”
So Farah (who asked that her full name be withheld to speak freely about health matters) started Googling her symptoms. That’s how I found Neueve, a vaginal health company that offers nutritional supplements, suppositories, and at-home vaginal microbiome testing kits.
She ordered a test from the company for $150, and her diagnosis came back: aerobic vaginosis (AV), a bacterial infection caused by an overgrowth of Escherichia coli or streptococcus. She ordered the company’s recommended supplements and said the pain subsided almost immediately. “I was so happy to find out what was wrong,” she says.
Farah is one of a growing number of women who have used home tests to self-diagnose problems with their vaginal microbiome – an ecosystem of bacteria that grows inside the vagina; The presence of “good” bacteria is associated with a lower risk of sexually transmitted infections and other infections, according to several studies. The industry received plaudits when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Johnson recently posted on X that he had just had oral sex with his girlfriend, Kate Tullo, and then followed that up with a screenshot of her report on the vaginal microbiome from TinyHealth. He announced that she received a “100/100” and that she was in the “top 1% of all vaginas” due to her dominance Lactobacillus crispatusIt is a type of “good” bacteria found in the vagina.
Johnson’s topic sparked widespread ridicule, with many wondering why Johnson would publicly measure his partner’s vaginal health in this way. But she’s also received responses from women online tracking their vaginal microbes to treat bacterial infections, boost fertility, or just out of interest. Some even published their results.
The market for at-home vaginal microbiome tests is growing – TinyHealth, the startup used by Tolo, claims sales of vaginal health tests rose 2,000 percent within the first 48 hours of Johnson’s post – and similar companies include Juno Bio, which is collaborating with Neueve; UK-based Daye, and Evvy. But some experts believe there is not yet enough research to support the long-term validity of such tests. None of the at-home kits on the market have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. There are also questions about whether these measures empower women to take their health care into their own hands or simply create more anxiety for them.
Twenty-eight-year-old Samantha (she also requested a pseudonym due to the sensitive nature of this topic) developed an interest in testing the vaginal microbiome after experiencing a bout with bacterial vaginosis, or BV. I ordered a test kit from Evvy at the recommendation of the Beyond BV group on Facebook, which offers support for women with recurrent vaginal infections, and where they often post their own results.
Samantha found her test results helpful, but she also noticed a distinct strain of paranoia within the group. For example, when many women receive their results, they tend to focus on whether they have had enough Lactobacillus crispatusOr the “good” bacteria in the vagina. “I’ll read posts where women feel terrible if they get 97 percent hardness, and then they’ll retake the test and they’ll get about 60 percent and they’ll feel really disappointed and scared,” she says. The opposite is also true. “Women will post about being 100 percent healthy, and comments from other women will be like, ‘Oh, I’m so jealous, I’m having a lot of problems, and I hope I can be like you one day.’
