Aciclovir treatment for genital herpes as proxy for circumcision?

If circumcision reduces ulcerative genital diseases in men and ulcerative diseases such as HCV infections are a co-factor for HIV infection, then the effect should be lower HIV infection rates over all. That's one of the theories anyway behind prophylactic circumcision. Yet a large study presented at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections using Aciclovir to suppress HCV in infected individuals should in theory also have reduced HIV infection in the HCV infected group and their partners. That didn't happen.

This failure of theory to deliver in practice raises numerous questions about the alleged benefit of circumcision to reduce HIV infection. If suppression of HCV doesn't reduce HIV infection, maybe HCV infection isn't the cause of the higher HIV rates. Could it be that HCV infected individuals are also behaving in ways that expose them to HIV rather than the HCV infection being a vector for the infection?

The head spins, thinking about how confused the research is in the area of understanding correlation and cause and effect in HIV transmission. Aciclovir may have made a good proxy for circumcision if it indeed had had the effect of reducing HIV infection. Because it didn't, it calls into question whether the mechanism for reduction in risk in circumcised men has anything to do at all with alleged lower HCV rates in these men.

Link: Aidsmap | Aciclovir treatment for genital herpes does not reduce HIV acquisition in men or women, major trial shows.