AIDS: New trial shows needs for caution in adopting circumcision strategy

Source: Yahoo news

Early data from a trial in Uganda shows that policymakers must be prudent when including circumcision among their tactics for fighting AIDS, researchers said on Tuesday.

Last year, three groundbreaking studies conducted in Africa found that male circumcision halved a man's risk of being infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

That discovery ignited hopes that the flagging quarter-century-old war against AIDS in Africa could be transformed by a simple, low-cost operation.

The new trial, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, explores a different angle of the circumcision story -- to see whether men who are infected with HIV and are circumcised are any less likely to infect their female partner.

US and Ugandan researchers are following 997 HIV-infected men in Rakai, Uganda. Some of them have been given circumcision, while the others have remained uncircumcised to act as a comparison.

A proportion of volunteers in both groups had uninfected long-term female partners at the start of the study. These women were also enrolled and monitored.

A review at the study's six-month mark looked at 70 couples in the "circumcised" group and found that 11 of the women had become infected. Among 54 couples in the "uncircumcised" group, four women had become infected.

The study is still underway and the data is not considered conclusive.

But the researchers said they were concerned, as several of the infections had been transmitted by men who had had sex before their wounds had fully healed from the circumcision surgery.

The AIDS virus can be carried in the blood, as well as in semen.

This means that, before circumcision can be universally endorsed as a prevention strategy, men and women have to be fully aware about the need to refrain from intercourse for a month or so while the penile wound has healed, the researchers said.

Both partners must be fully versed in safe-sex awareness, especially in condom use.
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