Circumcision changes penis biology

[xchrom]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349839/description/Circumcision_changes_penis_biology

***SNIP{ooops}


To measure these changes, the researchers enlisted 156 uncircumcised, married men in Uganda and obtained swabs from under each man’s foreskin. Roughly half of the men were then randomly assigned to get circumcised. A year later, researchers again took swabs.

While there was little difference in the penis biota in the men at the beginning of the study, the later samples revealed substantially less bacteria in the circumcised group and changes in the diversity of the bacteria that remained. Levels of nine kinds of anaerobic bacteria, which need an environment devoid of oxygen, had decreased.

Circumcision provides heterosexual men with considerable, but not total, protection against infection by HIV and other sexually transmitted viruses (SN: 4/25/2009, p. 10). Does changing the microbiota of the penis account for this protection? “We can’t say that our study answers that question, but we’re definitely chipping away at it,” says microbiologist Lance Price of George Washington University in Washington and the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Price and his coauthors suggest that high amounts of bacteria and the presence of poorly understood anaerobic microbes in uncircumcised men might contribute to inflammation, which would facilitate infection by HIV lodged in the foreskin.

[DetlefK]

1. The article that circumcision protects against STDs is behind pay-wall. Nice.

[kdmorris]

2. Not sure what you mean

It goes right to the article for me... no payment required (if I understand your use of the term "pay-wall&quot .

[DetlefK]

3. There is another article linked to within this article -> (SN: 4/25/2009, p. 10).

I was referring to the link provided to support the claim that circumcision keeps you from getting AIDS. I really would have liked to read THAT article.

[bemildred]

4. Whatever you do, don't post this in GD. nt

[xchrom]

5. i'm not brave enough for that.

[bemildred]

6. I like to think of it as renewable energy, but I have not figured out how to harness it yet ...

[xchrom]

7. !

it would be ENDLESSLY renewable.

[Hugh7]

8. So what?

This study merits a great big "SO WHAT?" It's hardly surprising if an enclosed part of the body, like between the toes, has different bacteria from an open part. The rest of the study is pure speculation piled on more speculation. But just let a story say "circumcision" and "HIV" and the media are all over it.

When are the media going to notice that it is just a tiny clique of interconnected researchers who are doing nothing but churning out articles in support of infant circumcision? In this case, the clique members are Aaron Tobian, Maria Wawer, Ronald Gray, David Serwadda and Godfrey Kigozi. Their study is of two groups of only 78 paid adult volunteers for circumcision - hardly a large or random sample of the population; each man accounts for 1.2 percentage points. They were recruited by inviting each other, so they would tend to know each other and maybe even have sexual partners in common. They are part of one of the three studies claiming to show that circumcision reduces HIV transmission (but only from women to men), that circumcision is safe, that it does no harm to sex and (not so publicised) that it does not reduce HIV transmission from men to women. (In fact they found it may INCREASE it, but that has had zero publicity.) They must be one of the most over-used experimental groups in history.

Why did they not give equivalent publicity to the letter from 38 top paediatricians - heads or spokespeople for 22 paediatric associations in 17 countries - basically the whole of Europe - pointing out that the American Academy of Pediatrics circumcision policy is culturally biased, utterly fails to show that the benefits outweigh the risks, and fails to assign any weight to the individual's right to choose the fate of his own genitals? (http://www.circumstitions.com/Docs/aap-12-europe.pdf They wrote because the AAP policy was being touted to promote legalising infant circumcision in Germany, contrary to its constitution.)
Or a new study showing that circumcision has no significant effect on STI transmission? (http://www.hindawi.com/isrn/urology/2013/109846/)

[bemildred]

9. Yep, it's twaddle.

Skin biota vary widely among humans, and all over humans, and they can change any time. There have been some interesting if rudimentary studies in this area, as it has dawned on the medical community that not all bacteria are bad.

The OP laboriously scrutinizes the obvious, looking for anything which may be construed as favoring circumcision as a universal policy.

[Quantess]

10. Biology? Does it have its own ecosystem?

Hey how's the flora and fauna down there?