Non-therapeutic male circumcision in infancy or childhood and risk of human immunodeficiency virus and other sexually transmitted infections:national cohort study in Denmark

Whether male circumcision in infancy or childhood provides protection against the acquisition of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in adulthood remains to be established. In the first national cohort study to address this issue, we identified 810,719 non-Muslim males born in Denmark between 1977 and 2003 and followed them over the age span 0–36 years between 1977 and 2013. We obtained information about cohort members’ non-therapeutic circumcisions, HIV diagnoses and other STI outcomes from national health registers and used Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) associated with foreskin status (i.e., circumcised v. genitally intact). During a mean of 22 years of follow-up, amounting to a total observation period of 17.7 million person-years, 3375 cohort members (0.42%) underwent non-therapeutic circumcision, and 8531 (1.05%) received hospital care for HIV or other STIs. Compared with genitally intact males, rates among circumcised males were not statistically significantly reduced for any specific STI. Indeed, circumcised males had a 53% higher rate of STIs overall (HR = 1.53, 95% CI: 1.24–1.89), and rates were statistically significantly increased for anogenital warts (74 cases in circumcised males v. 7151 cases in intact males, HR = 1.51; 95% CI: 1.20–1.90) and syphilis (four cases in circumcised males v. 197 cases in intact males, HR = 3.32; 95% CI: 1.23–8.95). In this national cohort study spanning more than three decades of observation, non-therapeutic circumcision in infancy or childhood did not appear to provide protection against HIV or other STIs in males up to the age of 36 years. Rather, non-therapeutic circumcision was associated with higher STI rates overall, particularly for anogenital warts and syphilis

Circumcision of male infants and children as a public health measure in developed countries:A critical assessment of recent evidence

In December of 2014, an anonymous working group under the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a draft of the first-ever federal recommendations regarding male circumcision. In accordance with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ circumcision policy from 2012 – but in contrast to the more recent 2015 policy from the Canadian Paediatric Society as well as prior policies (still in force) from medical associations in Europe and Australasia – the CDC suggested that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks. In this article, we provide a brief scientific and conceptual analysis of the CDC’s assessment of benefit versus risk, and argue that it deserves a closer look. Although we set aside the burgeoning bioethical debate surrounding the moral permissibility of performing non-therapeutic circumcisions on healthy minors, we argue that, from a scientific and medical perspective, current evidence suggests that such circumcision is not an appropriate public health measure for developed countries such as the United States

Appendicitis, mesenteric lymphadenitis, and subsequent risk of ulcerative colitis: cohort studies in Sweden and Denmark

Objective To determine whether the repeatedly observed low risk of ulcerative colitis after appendicectomy is related to the appendicectomy itself or the underlying morbidity, notably appendicitis or mesenteric lymphadenitis

Correlation between centromere protein-F autoantibodies and cancer analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

BACKGROUND: Centromere protein-F (CENP-F) is a large nuclear protein of 367 kDa, which is involved in multiple mitosis-related events such as proper assembly of the kinetochores, stabilization of heterochromatin, chromosome alignment and mitotic checkpoint signaling. Several studies have shown a correlation between CENP-F and cancer, e.g. the expression of CENP-F has been described to be upregulated in cancer cells. Furthermore, several studies have described a significant correlation between the expression of autoantibodies to CENP-F and cancer. METHODS: Autoantibodies to CENP-F were detected in a small number of samples during routine indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) analysis for anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) using HEp-2 cells as substrate. Using overlapping synthetic peptides covering a predicted structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) domain, we developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for detection of CENP-F antibodies. RESULTS: Analyzing the reactivity of the sera positive in IIF for CENP-F antibodies to overlapping CENP-F peptides, we showed that autoantibodies to several peptides correlate with the presence of antibodies to CENP-F and a diagnosis of cancer, as increased CENP-F antibody expression specific for malignant cancer patients to five peptides was found (A9, A12, A14, A16, A27). These antibodies to CENP-F in clinical samples submitted for ANA analysis were found to have a positive predictive value for cancer of 50%. Furthermore, the expression of cancer-correlated CENP-F antibodies seemed to increase as a function of time from diagnosis. CONCLUSION: These results conform to previous findings that approximately 50% of those patients clinically tested for ANA analyses who express CENP-F antibodies are diagnosed with cancer, confirming that these antibodies may function as circulating tumor markers. Thus, a peptide-based CENP-F ELISA focused on the SMC domain may aid in identifying individuals with a potential cancer