A study into the spread of HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, has found that male circumcision significantly protects men from picking up the infection.
The finding, though cautiously welcomed, presents a headache for health officials who fear that communities where male circumcision is common might neglect more effective protective measures such as using condoms and reducing their number of sexual partners.
The study, which followed infection rates in more than 3,000 heterosexual men over nearly two years, found that circumcision reduced a man's risk of acquiring HIV by 60 percent.
Scientists had suspected circumcision might offer some protection against the virus after noticing differences in HIV infection between groups where circumcision was a cultural right of passage and others where few were circumcised. Until now, no large-scale studies had been carried out to investigate the effect.
Adrian Puren at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg and a team of researchers in Paris recruited 3,274 uncircumcised volunteers from South Africa aged between 18 and 24, who were considering circumcision. Half underwent the operation. The researchers then monitored both groups for HIV infection over the next 21 months. So marked was the difference in infection between the groups that the study was halted on ethical grounds. Of those who had been circumcised, 20 tested positive for HIV while 49 of the uncircumcised group had contracted the virus.
In the journal Public Library of Science Medicine, the authors say that circumcision appears to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV by 61 percent, "equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved."
Peter Cleaton-Jones, the chairman of the human research ethics committee at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said: "Circumcision is not going to prevent HIV infection in the long run. If circumcised men think they're protected against HIV, they're fooling themselves. If they don't practise safe sex, they'll still be at risk, it's just a lower risk."
Why circumcision should offer some protection is not well understood, but researchers know that the part of the foreskin that is removed in the operation is rich in Langerhans cells that the virus strongly attaches to.
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS