Male circumcision benefits women too

Women who reported that their most recent male sex partner was circumcised were less likely to have HIV and genital herpes than women whose last partner was not circumcised in a study in South Africa, Aidsmap reports. This study, which was presented at the 9th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Research (IAS 2107) in Paris, France, on 25 July, analysed data on 4,766 women from consecutive household surveys conducted in two subdistricts of KwaZulu Natal, comparing rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among the women with circumcised partners with the rates among the women with uncircumcised partners. In a multivariate analysis that attempted to control for other differences between the two groups of women, those with circumcised partners were about 30 percent less likely to have HIV and about 20 percent less likely to have herpes simplex virus 2 (Aidsmap, 26 July 2017).