Victoria Handa
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) keep coming back for many older women. About 13% of female Medicare beneficiaries have at least one UTI a year, and more than 40% of them go on to develop chronic recurrent UTI (rUTI).
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
recurrent urinary tract infection
rUTI
vaginal estrogen therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Measure how vaginal estrogen therapy changes the vaginal and urinary microbiota, especially specific Lactobacillus species such as L. crispatus, in postmenopausal women with recurrent UTI, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing before and after treatment.
- Determine how vaginal estrogen therapy affects local immune responses in the vagina and bladder, including Th17 and Th1 versus Th2 signaling, by measuring soluble inflammatory mediators in samples collected before and after treatment.
- Compare the urogenital microbiota, immune signals and vaginal D-lactic acid, an acid that inhibits E. coli growth, between women who keep having UTIs on vaginal estrogen and women who remain UTI-free.
- Generate pilot data and candidate biomarkers that predict successful UTI prevention, to plan a larger, adequately powered clinical trial in postmenopausal women with recurrent UTI.
More about the research
Vaginal estrogen therapy (VET), a low-dose estrogen applied in the vagina, greatly reduces these infections. Even so, half of the women who use it keep getting UTIs, and no one knows why some women benefit and others do not.
Why it matters
Recurrent UTIs are among the most common and costly benign urologic conditions in postmenopausal women, and vaginal estrogen prevents recurrences for only about half of them. Identifying the bacterial and immune features linked to successful prevention could produce biomarkers that predict who will respond. It could also guide new prevention strategies for women who do not benefit from vaginal estrogen.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nicole Gilbert
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Optimize the design and fabrication of 3D-bioprinted catheter tubing that carries live Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, a probiotic strain, for long-lasting release of bacteria, lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide.
Diana Tordoff
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Recruit a longitudinal cohort of peri-menopausal, early post-menopausal and late post-menopausal women and characterize how vaginal microbiota composition and taxonomic richness change after they start menopause treatments.
Corrie Miller
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether women who deliver preterm have more Lactobacillus iners or anaerobic bacteria in mid-pregnancy vaginal swabs, using 16S sequencing to identify bacteria and to assign community state types (common bacterial patterns).
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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