"Circumcision reduces a man's risk of acquiring and transmitting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and now researchers have found a possible explanation: the procedure reduces the quantity and diversity of bacteria at the head of the penis," the New York Times' "Well" blog reports (Bakalar, 4/18).
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Male circumcision reduces the abundance of bacteria living on the penis and might help explain why circumcision offers men some protection against HIV, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute.
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Circumcision drastically alters the microbiome of the penis, changes that could explain why circumcision offers protection against HIV and other viral infections.
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South Africa is home to the largest HIV epidemic in the world with a total of 5.6 million people living with HIV. Large-scale clinical trials evaluating combination methods of prevention and treatment are often prohibitively expensive and take years to complete.
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Jewish leaders this week pointed to a recent independent study by Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that found little evidence to support the claim that a circumcision practice known as Metzitzah B'Peh (MBP) leads to an increased likelihood of herpes in infants.
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"U.S. agencies that work to fight HIV this week began a five-year effort with Malawi's government to improve health care for Malawians infected with the virus," VOA News reports.
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"PrePex, the new nonsurgical circumcision tool experts believe could revolutionize the prevention of HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, is easier to assemble than a toy you might find in a Happy Meal," freelance journalist Patrick Adams writes in the New York Times' "Opinionator" blog.
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The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women on Friday adopted a declaration urging an end to violence against women and girls, despite pushback from some conservative Muslim countries and the Vatican during negotiations.
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Having suggested in 2011 that the urethra is a novel entry site for HIV, a team from the Institut Cochin, has now confirmed this hypothesis and identified the cells and mechanisms brought into play: the immune system cells macrophages, present in the epithelium of the urethra, allow the entry of HIV. This work, published online on the website of the journal Mucosal Immunology, could make it possible to test novel HIV/AIDS prevention strategies.
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Circumcision performed between ages 3 to 6 years does not adversely affect men’s psychosexual function during adulthood, report Turkish researchers.
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"Changing attitudes have resulted in a decline in female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East, where the practice is most prevalent, according to United Nations data released on" the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, observed February 6, TrustLaw reports.
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"The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on Thursday urging countries to ban female genital mutilation, calling it an 'irreparable, irreversible abuse' that threatens about three million girls annually," Reuters reports.
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"If the world scales-up HIV treatment and prevention in the next two years, a critical tipping point -- in which those on treatment outnumber those newly infected with the virus -- could be reached, according to the global HIV prevention advocacy organization AVAC," PlusNews reports.
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In a study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Till Barnighausen, David Bloom, and Salal Humair of the Harvard School of Public Health examine "whether [HIV treatment as prevention (TasP)] is indeed a game changer or if comparable benefits are obtainable at similar or lower cost by increasing coverage of medical male circumcision (MMC) and antiretroviral treatment (ART)."
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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday announced the Obama administration's "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Blueprint: Creating an AIDS-free Generation", which calls for a combination of prevention strategies including widespread treatment, "male circumcision, condom distribution and stopping transmission from mother to child," NPR's "Shots" blog reports.
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Emmanuel Njeuhmeli, senior biomedical prevention adviser in the USAID Office of HIV/AIDS, writes in the agency's "IMPACTblog" that the first International Men's Day on November 19 was an opportunity to "recognize and celebrate the hundreds of thousands of men in East and Southern Africa who are stepping up for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) to protect their own health and that of their families."
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AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention on Tuesday "released its annual report that calls for an ambitious pace of funding, implementation, and research," VOA News reports, noting the report, titled "Achieving the End: One Year and Counting," "calls for a three-part agenda for ending AIDS: Deliver, Demonstrate, and Develop."
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Collaboration between medical and anthropological expertise can solve complex clinical problems in today's multicultural women's healthcare, shows Pauline Binder, a medical anthropologist, who will present her thesis on 1 December at the Faculty of Medicine, Uppsala University, Sweden.
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UNAIDS' new World AIDS Day report: Results, released on Tuesday, "shows that unprecedented acceleration in the AIDS response is producing results for people," according to a UNAIDS press release.
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"With donor money to fight HIV and AIDS falling, spending in sub-Saharan Africa must be targeted to get the best results," Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog, noting, "Sub-Saharan Africa has 10 percent of the world's population but is home to 70 percent of those living with HIV and AIDS."
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