By using agar jelly in the form of a sanitary towel, Guilia Tomasello believes that her project Future Flora will help treat common female Candida infections like thrush. The product uses bacteria, grown in the agar jelly and placed as a pad in front of a vagina, to balance vaginal pH-levels to prevent and treat Candid yeast infections.
Tomasello created Future Flora as part of her final master’s project at Central Saint Martins college in the United Kingdom. She told Dezeen that the pads try to restore healthy bacteria that humans lose through the use of heavy chemical soaps.
“We are no longer removing simply bad bacteria from our bodies, but also stripping it of the beneficial ones,” Tomasello said. “This means we are more susceptible and vulnerable to future infections and viruses.”
"By placing the pad in contact with the female genitalia, the healthy bacteria grow on the surface of the infected area, reconstructing the microflora missing in the vagina epithelium and maintaining a lower pH level in the vaginal area."
The Future flora kit includes a large Petri dish, a pipette with freeze-dried bacterial compound and an inoculation loop – a thin wire tool used to retrieve microbes from a culture.
"The kit has been designed to allow women to establish, nurture and harvest their very own personal skin flora at home, becoming not only consumers but also active participants in their own health and well-being,” she adds.
