If you’ve had bacterial vaginosis, like me, you may have been given antibiotic metronidazole to treat it. And maybe it worked on the first try, if you were lucky. But more likely, you went through multiple courses of the drug, and your doctor kept insisting that the treatment would work, you must be doing something wrong.

Which, I have to say, is insulting. Last time I checked, I knew how to take medication and follow doctors orders; I know you have to take all of the antibiotics for it to work properly. And hello, I haven’t gotten any relief from my symptoms; don’t you think I’d make sure to take properly something that promised relief from the itching and smelly, fish-like odour?


So, while reading up on possible treatments for bacterial vaginosis, I came across something quite disturbing. Metronidazole, the medication my doctor told me was the preferred treatment for bacterial vaginosis, was banned for use in animals in the EU because it had been proven to cause cancer.

Pardon me? You’re telling me that the very drug that my doctor has been encouraging me to take multiple times to the extent that he’s now just given me a multiple-refill prescription for when my bacterial vaginosis ‘reoccurs’ (his words, my words would be ‘never goes away’) is not allowed to be used on animals? So we’re more worried about the animals? What’s wrong with this picture?

Taking the information with a grain of salt (I did find it on the internet) I did some more research into the claim. It was true; tests had shown that metronidazole caused cancer and other genetic changes when tested on animals. It has not yet been found to conclusively cause cancer in people, quite possible because of a lack of studies.

I know that many drugs have harmful side affects, but their benefits far outweigh the negatives. And if, as it is meant to be used, a single course of metronidazole worked as a treatment for bacterial vaginosis, I would have no problem accepting that risk. But since things like this have a cumulative affect, my point is that chronic sufferers of bacterial vaginosis shouldn’t be taking metronidazole as a treatment multiple times, when it doesn’t even work for them.

I instead persevered in my quest for another form of treatment for my bacterial vaginosis, and I found something that would actually work. And not a cancer-causing drug in sight. Check out my “bacterial vaginosis relief” review, and I hope it can help you as much as it helped me.