Merck vaccine protects men from wart virus, too

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 week 3 days (www.reuters.com)

A vaccine designed to protect women and girls from cervical cancer caused by a wart virus may protect men, too, maker Merck and Co reported on Thursday

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HPV infection rates similar in men and women

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 1 week (www.reuters.com)

Although men are at high risk of acquiring human papillomavirus (HPV) infections, most last no more than a year, about the same time this sexually transmitted disease persists in women, researchers report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

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Sex and Social Networking

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 1 week (www.sciencebase.com)

Studies have shown that social networking is a risk factor for catching a sexually transmitted disease (but only real-world social networking; LinkedIn is okay). However, this seems to be more of a result of an understanding of what a social network is than any Internet-induced change in the way people choose sexual partners. Sexually transmitted diseases are by definition (usually) transmitted along intimate social networks.

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HIV in the U.S. hits American blacks extra hard

Darkfrog submitted, created time 2 months 1 week (www.nytimes.com)

The CDC has released a report on the way HIV spreads in the United States. Again, American blacks are at disproportionately high risk. While caucasian gay and bisexual men tend to get infected int heir thirties and forties, black gay and bisexual men tend to get infected in their teens and twenties.

The writeup does not say whether they adjusted for socioeconomic factors, but they do assert that the infected blacks were no more likely to be drug users or to engage in risky sexual behaviors than their counterparts in other races

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Study: Treating herpes doesn't prevent HIV

kavin submitted, created time 5 months 3 days (hosted.ap.org)

Doctors have long suspected that people with herpes are more likely to catch HIV. So they thought that by treating herpes, they could also cut a person's HIV risk. But a new study that tested this strategy found the assumption may have been wrong.

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One fourth of American teenage girls have at least one STD.

Darkfrog submitted, created time 8 months 1 week (www.nytimes.com)

We've been talking about Gardasil and Cerverix a lot recently. Sure, lots of parents are reluctant to vaccinate their children before they become teenagers, but a nationwide study reveals that 50% of black teenagers and 20% of white teenagers have at least one STD. The specific age ranges are fourteen to nineteen. And what is the most common infection out there? Shocker of shockers, it's HPV

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Virtue Meets Virus: aiming the HPV vaccine toward young men

DanyC submitted, created time 8 months 1 week (edition.cnn.com)

CNN that studies on Gardasil in boys should be completed this year, and it hopes to have the vaccine approved and available to young men as early as next year, likely for 16-to 23-year-olds - in the form of the same series of three shots that young women now receive.

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Disappointing news in fight against HIV

Sue Wu submitted, created time 9 months 2 weeks (www.kansascity.com)

A once-promising experiment to see if treating genital herpes with a common drug could dramatically reduce susceptibility to HIV infection has found no protection whatsoever.

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Male circumcision has limited effect on curtailing AIDS

Darkfrog submitted, created time 9 months 2 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

It had been thought that the voluntary circumcision of adult men would slow the spread of AIDS there, but it has since been confirmed that their female partners are no less likely to contract AIDS from a circumcised man than from an uncircumcised one and are more likely to do so if the man is not fully healed from the procedure. However, the same studies reveal that circumcision reduces the rate of other communicable ailments in men.

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Syphilis: spoil of the New World?