Young African men who are circumcised are less likely to engage in sexual behavior that ups their chances of catching HIV, a new research by University of Illinois researchers has revealed!
Led by Nelli Westercamp, PhD., and with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the team of researchers studied voluntary medical male circumcision in Kenya between 2008 and 2010. Within the two-year window, half of the 3,186 men, ages 18-35, studied got circumcised.
All of the men were asked every six months about their sexual behaviors, whether or not they used condoms and how at-risk they thought they were for getting HIV. They were also encouraged to attend HIV testing clinics and watch educational HIV videos.
While circumcised and uncircumcised men both increased their sexual activity by the same amount during the study period, condom use increased among both groups, but engagement in risky sex behaviors did not. Those behaviors include having multiple partners and exchanging money or gifts for sex.
The researchers also found that circumcised men thought they were at a lower risk for getting HIV than they were before they were circumcised. Before they got snipped, 30% of circumcised men thought they were at a high risk for HIV, but after, only 14% thought so. For uncircumcised men, 25% believed they were at high risk of HIV before the study, while 21% believed they were still at high risk when the study ended.
The numbers suggest that the benefits of offering circumcision outweigh the risks of doing so. Hence trying to encourage communities that have been holding back on implementing medical circumcision. The research appears in the July 21 edition of AIDS and Behavior.
