Disappointing News In Bid To Stop HIV Transmission

Disappointing news from an analysis of data regarding male circumcision and HIV transmission.

After the analysis of data on men who have sex with men, researchers at the Center For Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta have concluded that circumcision does not appear to slow down or stop the rate of HIV infection.

This is in stark contrast to studies of heterosexual men in Africa, where it has been proven that circumcision can cut the rate of female to male HIV transmission by up to 60 percent.

However, there was evidence that circumcision may have had a protective effect in studies carried out before the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1996.

The researchers said one possible explanation was that the advent of these more effective HIV drugs had encouraged higher levels of risk taking sexual behavior, wiping out any marginal protective effect from circumcision.

Alternatively, the drugs may have helped lower the risk of transmission to the point where circumcision had no further benefit.

A third possibility is that there may have been a smaller proportion of men in the pre-HAART trials who primarily engaged in receptive anal sex, which carries the greatest risk for HIV infection among gay men.

The study analyzed data on 53, 567 men. Of those men, 52 percent were circumcised.

The Journal of the American Medical Association study stressed more work was needed to draw firm conclusions. Information source BBC.