Circumcision may stop millions of HIV deaths

Circumcision may stop millions of HIV deaths

Significantly lower infection rate among circumcised men, WHO report finds

Reuters

WASHINGTON - Circumcising men routinely across Africa could prevent millions of deaths from AIDS, World Health Organization researchers and colleagues reported Monday.

They analyzed data from trials that showed men who had been circumcised had a significantly lower risk of infection with the AIDS virus, and calculated that if all men were circumcised over the next 10 years, some two million new infections and around 300,000 deaths could be avoided.

Researchers believe circumcision helps cut infection risk because the foreskin is covered in cells the virus seems able to easily infect. The virus may also survive better in a warm, wet environment like that found beneath a foreskin.

So if men were circumcised, fewer would become infected and thus could not infect their female partners.

The human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, which causes AIDS, now infects close to 40 million people and has killed another 25 million. It mostly affects sub-Saharan Africa and the main mode of transmission is sex between a man and a woman.

Several studies have suggested that men who are circumcised have a lower rate of HIV infection. This has been especially noticeable in some parts of Africa, where some groups are routinely circumcised while neighboring groups are not.

Last year, Dr. Bertran Auvert of the French National Research Agency INSERM and colleagues at WHO found that circumcised men in South Africa were 65 percent less likely to become infected with the deadly and incurable virus.

His team then did an analysis to see what would happen if all African men were circumcised.

“In West Africa, male circumcision is common and the prevalence of HIV is low, while in southern Africa the reverse is true,” they wrote in the current report, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine.

“This analysis shows that male circumcision could avert nearly six million new infections and save three million lives in sub-Saharan Africa over the next twenty years,” they wrote.

Overall, they project that universal male circumcision would reduce the rate of infections by about 37 percent.

“Male circumcision alone cannot bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa under control. Even circumcised men can become infected, though their risk of doing so is much lower,” the journal cautioned in a commentary.

http://www.msnb c.msn.com/id/13 … 2938/from/RS.1/

Interesting. But I wonder what implementing a universal “Let’s not commit adultry” policy would do to the spread of HIV.

These old “customs and traditions” had some merits. It is only a third less so why bother.

Or a “If thou wilst commit adultery, use a condom” policy?

And also “clean your dick more” might come in handy.

I remember this from a previous thread where I think an african explained they use the same knife for circumsizing a couple hundred boys at once.

What can you say. For the sake of science, keep having sex with a known HIV positive women. In Botswana, for example, 38% of pregnant women are HIV positive!

In order to fully benefit, you must remove as much mucuosal tissue as possible. No inner skin or frenum should remain after the circumcision. That is, according to the article analyzing the topic of how the foreskin seems to affect HIV transmission linked here.

The following article is an in depth analysis of the issue of circumcision and incidence of AIDS/HIV. It does pre-date the article above by a few years, but that doesn’t make the data wrong. It does show an increase in risk of HIV for uncircumcised men, but how big? In the United States, which has the highest circumcision (except for Israel) and HIV infection rates in the first world, you would still need to perform 23,148 circumcisions to prevent one HIV infection. In Australia and the UK, where circumcision is rare, it would take 82,304 and 154,320 circumcisions respectively to prevent one case of AIDS.

Wow. That’s really a high payoff rate, isn’t it?

Cultural bias in the sample? I’ve read that (at least in some countries) the men who are circumcised come from middle class and higher backgrounds whereas it is the unwashed masses who remain uncircumcised. Like many other diseases, being dirt poor seems to be a factor. Or in headline news-speak, Having Money May Prevent Millions of HIV Infections.

Condoms could prevent close to 100%.

I would agree that condoms should help, but page one of the first article I linked said that condom use didn’t make a difference in HIV transmission rate among the subjects.

That is something I find very hard to believe.

Well, it’s in there. They also claim that none of the circumcised men got HIV from their regular, HIV positive, partner.

I remember discussing this stuff pretty thoroughly here.

Good one. Close this thread :)