In the most convincing study to date, a French AIDS researcher discovered that circumcised men were 63 percent less likely to contract HIV through sexual intercourse with infected women.
Presented at the International AIDS Society conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, French AIDS researcher Bertran Auvert wowed the audience with the results of his study that followed 3,273 South African men who volunteered.
That circumcised men were nearly two-thirds less likely than uncircumcised men to be infected through heterosexual intercourse with HIV-positive women was a surprise and reflected a massive advantage of circumcision over an AIDS vaccine providing only a 30 percent reduction.
Auvert, of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Saint-Maurice, France, was quick to call for action.
“Male circumcision must be recognized as an important means to fight the spread of HIV infection and the international community must mobilize to promote it,” he wrote in the abstract.
Several studies have been done and are currently under way testing the effects of circumcision as a protective measure, but Auvert’s study is the most extensive, involving over 3000 men.
Circumcision is common in the US, but less common in many other places like Asia and Europe. In Africa, where some regions are torn by an HIV/AIDS rate topping 30 percent, circumcision is common only certain ethnic and religious groups. In all, about 70 percent of African men are circumcised.
Auvert and his team worked with South African researchers in 2002, studying the uninfected, uncircumcised volunteers between 18 and 24 years old in a town just south of Johannesburg. Half of the men were randomly assigned to be circumcised, while the other half remained as they were. For every ten uncircumcised men who contracted HIV during the study, only three circumcised men became infected.
When these results came in, the study was stopped nine months early because researchers considered it unethical to not offer circumcision to all subjects involved.
Scientists believe the foreskin of the penis is more vulnerable to tearing during intercourse in addition to having high-density Langerhans cells, which are especially vulnerable to HIV.
Because of this, it is also thought that circumcision may help to prevent other sexually transmitted diseases.
Thirty-five studies precede this particular study suggesting the effectiveness of circumcision against acquiring disease. Researchers since 1989 have noted that HIV rates in Africa seemed especially higher in regions where circumcision was not practiced.
While adult HIV rates are over 30 percent in Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, where circumcision is uncommon, infection rates are less than 5 percent in West Africa where circumcision is the norm.