Notebook: This Week In HPV/HSV/HIV

Nothing focuses the mind like waking up to stacks of files with looming deadlines and an expectant client sitting in your office asking questions about the trial that, by the way, starts tomorrow. A couple of concentrated weeks of longer than usual days cleared my desk if only for the next wave and we won the trial. So all's good and I'm back.

Meanwhile, the press churned out more blogger fodder in the week that was.

Treating HSV Does Not Significantly Reduce Risk of HIV

As has been reported here in an earlier post viz. men, treating HSV (herpes) apparently doesn't reduce the risk of HIV infection in women either, according to a study conducted in Tanzania [Medscape, reg. req.'d]. As the rationale behind circumcision has been that it also may reduce some ulcerative STDs, it therefore should reduce the risk of HIV. If circumcision does reduce risk of HIV, it isn't apparently due to a reduced level of ulcerative genital conditions in men from treating HSV as the earlier study so urgently hoped. Now, we know that the women being treated also get no benefit.

Bottomline: Early detection is probably the best defense against the spread of both HIV and HSV, which we have known of course for decades.

Secondary lesson: We still have no idea why circumcision may reduce the risk of HIV. Researchers are just guessing when they offer a rationale.

1 in 4 Teenage Girls

Sounds like the title of a horror movie, but instead it was the latest hysteria (Yahoo! News, link will expire) from the media. A bunch of researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at data broken down into age groups. It isn't clear from media reports where they collected the data, but accordingly nearly half of African American girls have a sexually transmitted disease compared with 20 percent of white girls.

Apart from the smear of young black girls and the obvious appeal to hysteria, appropriately enough during STD Awareness Week, more, much more needs to be known about the sample and where it was taken. Moreover, the most common STD was HPV, a disease for which we have two vaccines for the most common types and which can also be completely cleared by the body. Either the researchers were highlighting the lack of screening or commenting on the sorry state of healthcare in the United States.

Despite Vaccines, Bored Researchers Study Circumcision to Determine Prevalence of HPV Among Men

Nothing like a hysterical headline to grab attention. UNCIRCUMCISED MEN RUN TWICE HIGHER RISK (sic) OF CANCER-CAUSING HPV blares the International AIDS Society. Of course, many other studies have shown only a slightly increased risk and other developed intact countries have much lower rates over all. Therefore, uncircumcised men probably do not run twice the risk unless they are in a country with a feudal healthcare system or lack early detection. Perhaps the title should have been AMERICAN MEN RUN TWICE THE RISK OF HPV INFECTION or AFRICAN MEN RUN TWICE THE RISK ... or whatever.

Besides, aren't they about to approve the two HPV vaccines for use in men? Oh yeah, yeah they are!

Comments

[Elizabeth Pisani]

"Early detection is probably the best defense against the spread of both HIV and HSV, which we have known of course for decades."

Hmmm. And there was I thinking that condom use was a pretty good defence against both HIV and HSV, for those who care enough to use them.

By the way you'll find a link to the full text of the HSV study here

[David]

True, condoms first. Then, early detection through regular and widespread testing.