LOS ANGELES, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Circumcision, once a routine procedure for newborn boys, is falling out of favor in the United States.
In recent years, many doctors and medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have stopped recommending routine circumcisions because they believed there wasn't enough evidence that it's medically necessary, despite growing evidence that the surgery may reduce the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Overall circumcision rates in the U.S. have fallen to the lowest level in more than half a century, from more than 63 percent in 1993 to less than 56 percent in 2003, the last year for which federal data are available.
Some HIV prevention experts, however, have begun urging doctors to recommend circumcision for newborns.
In the first random trial, published this month in the Public Library of Science Medicine, researchers tracked more than 3,200 men in South Africa who were randomly assigned either to be circumcised or not. Only 20 men in the first group became infected whereas 49 in the second did.
Other, smaller studies done over the last several years strongly suggest circumcision also protects against gonorrhea and syphilis.
