Vaginal swab and white blood cells

[joanneg20]

Does anyone know anything about this?

I had a vaginal swab taken earlier this week as I had a bit of spotting (am 17 weeks pregnant). Today I got the results back, and it was negative for all the infections they tested for, but apparently had a white blood cell count of 'plus one', whatever that means.

The person who rang with the results didn't seem to think it was anything to worry about - does anyone know if this is normal, or if not, what could cause it?

There's possibly a bit of an infection there as white blood cells increase when there's an infection. Did they give you any antibiotics? Do you have to have another swab?

could be a bit of discharge contamination or a minor infection or nothing really to worry about.. you would know if you needed treatment

A raised white cell count can indicate infection. But I don't know what 'plus one' means specifically. I wonder why they would ask someone to ring you with the results who didn't know what the results meant!! I'd ring your surgery/midwife again just to be sure.

Thanks for replies. The person I spoke to was just the consultant's secretary, and I'll be able to find out more on Monday. I just wondered if anyone knew whether '+1' was even an abnormal white blood cell count, and if it was, what might be causing it...

Don't worry.

They have checked your swab for two things
1.certain bacteria which can cause infections in the vaginal area ( they have told you the result is negative because nothing significant grew on their agar plates)
2.Presence of white blood cells ( by looking at a smear of the swab under the microscope)
Any white blood cells present are graded as scanty +/-, +, ++,+++, because raised numbers indicate infection it is importnat to report how many they have seen.

Sometimes they see a high number of white cells +++ but nothing grows, so they would then follow that up.

They need to look at the two together:
In your case, no significant bacteria, only + white blood cells, which as Lulumama pointed out is nothing to worry about.

If for example they saw also + yeast cells, ( a common cause of whitish discharge - they would have informed you that you need treatment)

What the secretary did is read out a result on the report sheet, without knowing how to interpret it. When it goes to your gp or midwife she/he will probably say it was negative.

Knowing that + is present can help to track things if there is a change eg if you get discharge etc.

Hope that puts your mind at rest for the wkend.

Samsonara, that is incredibly helpful and does put my mind at rest, thank you.

white blood cells are 'puss' basically aren't they? So it's the body rallying to an infection?