Circumcision doesn't save women from HIV

Jul 18, 2009

BALTIMORE - Circumcision may help protect men from HIV but it does not protect the wives and female partners of infected men, researchers reported on Thursday.

BALTIMORE - Circumcision may help protect men from HIV but it does not protect the wives and female partners of infected men, researchers reported on Thursday.

The disappointed researchers had to stop the trial, which they had hoped would confirm early suggestions that circumcision would protect both sexes.

But, they said, circumcision is so effective in protecting men it is still likely to benefit women indirectly by reducing circulation of the virus in general.

“We were disappointed that the trial did not show protection from HIV infection in women, as was expected from observational studies,” Dr. Maria Wawer of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and colleagues in Uganda wrote in the Lancet medical journal.

AIDS has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the early 1980s and has infected about 33 million.

Reuters

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