Health news - 2 items

Circumcised men's risk lower
December 5, 2006

Men who are circumcised may have a significantly reduced risk of
acquiring a sexually transmitted disease compared with those who are
not, a New Zealand study has found.
Researchers followed 510 boys born in 1977, giving them frequent
medical examinations until they were 25. Thirty percent of them had
been circumcised by age 15. A little less than 3 percent reported a
sexually transmitted disease at age 21, and an additional 6.6
percent reported one at 25.
After statistically adjusting for family education, socioeconomic
status, number of partners and self-reported unprotected sex,
researchers concluded that the odds of acquiring a subsequent STD
were 3.19 times higher for men who were uncircumcised. The study was
published in Pediatrics.
David M. Fergusson, professor of medical psychology at Christchurch
School of Medicine, warned that the results were not conclusive. “We
are cautious about the findings,” he said. “They depend on
self-reports, and not all studies agree with ours. But our results
definitely suggest that circumcision may reduce rates of STDs.”
Fergusson declined to offer advice to parents. “Decisions to
circumcise children should not be made on the basis of one study,”
he said.





Prostate cancer test often unwarranted

Though more than one-third of patients 85 or older in veterans
hospitals receive tests for prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, the
cancer marker, researchers report, no professional associations or
advocacy groups recommend the test for that age group. And there is
no evidence that such patients benefit from treatment of prostate
cancer if it is found.
Dr. Louise Walter and her colleagues analyzed data on almost 600,000
patients at Veterans Affairs hospitals and found that while
screening rates decline with the age of the patient, 56 percent of
patients older than 70, and 36 percent of those over 85 were getting
the test. Those in poor health were tested just as often as the
healthiest.
The test has significant risks, Walter said, including false
positives, which are more common with older patients and lead to
unnecessary biopsies and treatment. "People get stressed at the test
result, then they get a biopsy that shows they have a low-grade
cancer," she said. "When they hear the word 'cancer,' they often
insist on an operation to get it out. This is unnecessary treatment
that can have significant side effects."


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