Medical Journal Reports Benefits of Circumcision

Women whose sexual partners are circumcised have lower rates of cervical cancer, and their male partners have lower rates of sexually transmitted disorders, an international team reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. For years, doctors have known that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is the cause of 99% of all cases of cervical cancer and that men who have multiple sex partners are most likely to transmit it.

But in an analysis of seven studies in five countries, researchers found that circumcision is key to limiting the spread of the virus and, hence, the cancer. Only 5% of circumcised men carried HPV, they found, compared with 20% of uncircumcised men.