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Circumcision reduces HPV risk
Circumcision reduces HPV risk
10-11-2004
From Reuters:
Circumcision, condoms reduce risk of HPV
2004-10-07 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause of genital warts, and some subtypes of the virus can cause cancer. Now,
researchers report that circumcision and regular condom use seem to
reduce the risk of penile HPV infection.
Although HPV is the main cause of cervical and anal cancer, few studies have looked at risk factors for penile HPV infection in men, Dr. Susie Baldwin, from the VA Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center in California, and colleagues point out in the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
To investigate this issue, the researchers studied 393 men who attended an STD clinic in Arizona between July 2000 and January 2001. The team gave the men questionnaires and tested swabs of the penis for DNA from HPV, to see if they were infected.
The likelihood of detecting HPV was over three times higher for men who engaged in sexual intercourse more than 30 times per month compared with those who had intercourse no more than 5 times per month.
[The way this figure is reported is frustrating because while we might suspect that the former group was bi and gay men doing anal, we don't know that.
But we do know that among men who are anally receptive, HPV prevalence is 30 times higher than among the general population.]
As noted, circumcision and regular condom use seemed to protect against penile HPV. Circumcised men were one-third as likely as
uncircumcised men to be infected, while always using a condom halved the risk compared with never using a condom.
The increasing rate of HPV-related cancers in the US "attests to the
importance of understanding HPV not only in women, but in men, who serve as vectors of this ubiquitous virus and potentially as reservoirs," the researchers conclude.
SOURCE: Sexually Transmitted Diseases, October 2004.
Bill Weintraub:
Why is this article significant?
Remember first off, that the researchers were looking at men engaged in anal penetration and penile-vaginal sex.
It doesn't tell us anything about Frot guys, cut or uncut, and HPV -- which at this point is an unknown.
But what it does tell us is that male circumcision (MC) is protective against HPV in the vagina and in the anus.
More than condoms.
Condoms reduced risk by a factor of two.
MC by a factor of three.
Coming a year after the much larger Indian study reported by AIDS map as Uncircumcised Indian men have 8 times higher HIV risk, it's further confirmation that MC is protective against at least some STDs.
In the case of the Indian study, uncut men were at eight times the risk as circumcised men for HIV.
Which explains why, in Subsaharan Africa, HIV has been a disease of
Christian and animist areas, and not, on the whole, of Muslim.
This new study tells us that uncut men are at three times the risk of HPV as guys who are circumcised.
Those are significant findings.
Does that mean it's bad to be uncut?
No.
But it does suggest that uncut men need to be careful.
For me, the significance of these studies is that they point up the way our "mainstream" but in reality oppositional gay male subculture has too often reflexively embraced behaviors which are dangerous:
Anal penetration.
Promiscuity.
Non-circumcision.
The cult of uncut cock is particularly telling because it's always been so unthinking.
There's no compelling evidence and there never has been that
uncircumcised men have greater penile sensitivity than circumcised men.
But that has not prevented gay men from proclaiming that circumcision is a patriarchal plot to deprive men of pleasure.
Which makes no sense.
Female circumcision can properly be characterized as a cruel attempt by men to limit women's sexual pleasure and control female sexuality.
But there's no reason men would seek to limit their own sexual
pleasure.
Rather, what we can see is that mainstream gay male culture has made a number of bad choices over the last 30 years, including anal
penetration, promiscuity, effeminacy, and non-circumcision.
All of those decisions need to be rethought in light of our present
understanding of disease and happiness.
And if it does turn out that MC is protective against HPV -- a
ubiquitous STI -- for guys into Frot and JO too, we'll have even more to think about.
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