After adjusting for potentially confounding variables including age, contraceptives, prostate-specific antigen (PSA), and co-infections, BV was associated with the largest number of differentially abundant proteins, followed by inflammatory cytokine profiles, while fewer associations were observed between chemokine profiles and protein relative abundance and none between STI status and protein relative abundance (Additional file 1: Fig. S1e). The gene discussed is KLK3; the disease is bacterial vaginosis.