Circumcision halves HIV risk for men

Men who are circumcised are half as likely to contract HIV during heterosexual sex as men who aren't, according to a University of Illinois study of Kenyan men.

Of the men aged 18 to 24 who tested negative for HIV at the start of the two-year trial, about one out of 62 who were already circumcised later contracted HIV, versus one out of 29 men who were uncircumcised initially, researchers found. More than 2,700 men from Kisumu, Kenya, participated in the study.

Circumcision may help reduce the incidence of HIV, which infects about 30 million people in Africa, researchers at the university in Chicago said. About 90 percent of the African adults with HIV contracted the virus that causes AIDS through heterosexual intercourse, and about a quarter of uncircumcised men in Kisumu get the disease by age 25.

The results may encourage health agencies "to actively promote circumcision in a safe context and along with other HIV prevention strategies," said Robert Bailey, professor of epidemiology in the university's School of Public Health, in a statement Wednesday.

The results prompted the National Institutes of Health in, Md., to halt the trial before its completion so that all of the uncircumcised men in the study could be offered the procedure, the university said Wednesday.

AIDS has killed about 28 million people since it was first recognized in 1981, making it one of the most lethal epidemics in modern times. Governments and charities such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria began increasing financial commitments in recent years as the rate of HIV infection surged and those in poor countries most affected by the disease struggle to pay for drugs.

About 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. In the U.S., more than a million people are infected with the virus, with about 40,000 more contracting it each year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington.

The U.S. government has allocated $15 billion through a five-year program to fight disease around the world.