Introduction: HIV affects more women than any other life-threatening infectious agent, and
most infections are sexually transmitted. HIV must breach the female genital tract mucosal
barrier to establish systemic infection, and clinical studies indicate virus more easily evades
this barrier in women using depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) and other
injectable progestins for contraception. Identifying a potential mechanism for this
association, we learned DMPA promotes susceptibility of wild-type mice to genital herpes …