Because semen is a major vehicle for the sexual transmission of HIV-1, control of viral replication within the sanctuary of the male genital tract should be a goal of antiretroviral therapy. Local immune responses, virus specific factors, and the degree of viral and cellular trafficking all appear to be important in controlling viral replication and evolution. However, the most important factor...

BACKGROUND Genital ulcers (GU) are associated with an increased risk of HIV transmission. Understanding risk factors for genital ulcers and sexual behaviour patterns after onset of symptoms and health seeking behaviour among GU-patients can provide useful information to aid design effective prevention strategies for genital ulcers. We investigated risk factors of self-reported GUs and care-seek...

UNLABELLED A number of men receiving prolonged suppressive highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) still shed human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in semen. To investigate whether this seminal shedding may be due to poor drug penetration and/or viral production by long-lived cells within male genital tissues, we analyzed semen and reproductive tissues from macaques chronically infected with ...

STUDY QUESTION Is there evidence at the population level of associations between different male genital disorders, outside Scandinavian countries? SUMMARY ANSWER At an international scale, there is evidence for a number of correlations between rates of four male reproductive disorders (hypospadias, cryptorchidism, testicular cancer and low sperm concentration). WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Some as...

In animals with internal fertilization and promiscuous mating, male genitalia show rapid and divergent evolution. Three hypotheses have been suggested to explain the evolutionary processes responsible for genital evolution: the lock-and-key hypothesis, the pleiotropy hypothesis and the sexual-selection hypothesis. Here, we determine whether variation in male genital morphology influences fertil...

The female genital organs of the tetrablemmid Indicoblemma lannaianum are astonishingly complex. The copulatory orifice lies anterior to the opening of the uterus externus and leads into a narrow insertion duct that ends in a genital cavity. The genital cavity continues laterally in paired tube-like copulatory ducts, which lead into paired, large, sac-like receptacula. Each receptaculum has a s...

BACKGROUND Because many human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are transient, rates of transmission may be miscalculated if the interval between testing spans several months. We examined rates of concordance and transmission in heterosexual couples over short intervals. METHODS  Twenty-five adult couples were enrolled and sampled for HPV DNA from the genitals, hand, and mouth 5 times over a 6-...

Background: External genital anomalies are the most common congenital disorders in male infants with unknown etiology in the majority of cases. According to recent reports, incidence rate of these anomalies is rising in different countries. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of external genital anomalies and possible underlying factors in male newborns. Methods: This cross-sectional st...

OBJECTIVE Male circumcision reduces female-to-male HIV-1 transmission risk by approximately 60%. Data assessing the effect of circumcision on male-to-female HIV-1 transmission are conflicting, with one observational study among HIV-1-serodiscordant couples showing reduced transmission but a randomized trial suggesting no short-term benefit of circumcision. DESIGN/METHODS Data collected as par...

In internally fertilizing species male genitalia often show a higher degree of elaboration than required for simply transferring sperm to females. Among the hypotheses proposed to explain such diversity, sexual selection has received the most empirical support, with studies revealing that genital morphology can be targeted by both pre-and postcopulatory sexual selection. Until now, most studies...