h cervical HPV infection are more at risk, but this is the first study that shows the same effect in men. The team wanted to see whether penile HPV affected the risk for acquiring HIV and they also wanted to asses whether circumcision status affected the risk.
They enrolled 2500 men in Kenya for the study and they followed them up for a median 30 months, testing them every 6 months for penile HPV and HIV
Over the period of follow up 2.4 % of the men acquired HIV. The men who were circumcised were significantly less likely to be infected with HIV. Of the men who acquired HIV, 61% also had HPV infection, 46% of those had the high risk cancer causing types( type 16 and 18)
Further analysis showed that men with HPV infection had almost twice the risk of getting infected with HIV. There circumcision status did not significantly alter the risk. It was also noted that the more types of HPV the men were infected with, the higher the risk of contracting HIV and those infected with the highest risk types 16 and 18, had the highest risk for HIV
Although this is early work, I do feel that this is further evidence supporting the case for vaccination of males with the Gardasil vaccine, which prevents HPV infection with the 4 most common and cancer causing strain.