Washington: There is not enough evidence to show that circumcision reduces; the risk of AIDS in sex be- ! tween men, researchers are reporting, even though previous studies in Africa have shown its pronounced benefit in reducing AIDS from heterosexual sex.
"Over all, we're not finding a protective effect associated with circumcision for gay and bisexual men," said Gregorio A Millet t of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lead author of a report that appears Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The researchers based their conclusions on a review of 15 studies involving 53,567 gay and bisexual men in eight countries, including the United States, where nearly half of the 1.1 million people infected with the AIDS virus are men who have sex with men.
Circumcised men were 14 per cent less likely to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, than those who were uncircumcised, but the finding was not statistically ! significant, the researchers said.
Studies showed that male circumcision halved the risk of female-to-male HIV infection.
Experts say this reduced HIV risk may be because cells on the inside of the foreskin are especially susceptible to HIV infection. Gay and bisexual men play a much larger role in AIDS in many countries outside of Africa, Reuters
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