Male circumcision, religion, and infectious diseases: an ecologic analysis of 118 developing countries

BMC Infectious Diseases

Table 2 Male circumcision prevalence and selected infectious diseases among developing countries.

	Univariate linear regression of male circumcision prevalence¹			Countries with low (<20%) male circumcision prevalence		Countries with high (>80%) male circumcision prevalence
	No. of countries	Regression coefficient	R ²*	No. of countries	Mean ± SD*	No. of countries	Mean ± SD*
HIV prevalence among sub-Saharan Africa (/100 adults)²	38	-0.90	0.51	8	16.48 ± 0.002	22	2.98 ± 0.002
HIV prevalence among non-sub-Saharan African countries with primarily heterosexual HIV transmission (/100 adults)²	29	-1.08	0.51	11	0.76 ± 0.004	17	0.09 ± 0.002
HIV prevalence among non-sub-Saharan African countries with primarily homosexual or injection drug use HIV transmission (/100 adults)²	33	-1.03	0.29	25	0.41 ± 0.004	4	0.06 ± 0.001
Cervical cancer incidence (/100,000 women/year)	117	-7.2	0.18	51	35.0 ± 16.2	52	20.5 ± 12.8
Herpes Simplex Virus type-2 prevalence (/100 women)	23	-6.1	0.08	10	42.9 ± 13.8	9	30.2 ± 21.6
Tuberculosis prevalence (/100,000)	110	25.9	0.01	48	244 ± 191	49	296 ± 244
Hepatitis C prevalence (/100 adults)	75	0.20	0.003	37	3.17 ± 3.90	34	3.46 ± 3.81
Syphilis prevalence (/10,000 women)	43	51.7	0.0006	20	295 ± 235	14	284 ± 317
Malaria prevalence (/10,000)	94	-31.7	0.0007	31	385 ± 887	31	331 ± 596

SD – standard deviation.
* R² values and mean values in bold type had p-values <0.001 and in italics type had p-values <0.05. R² values and mean values not in bold or italics type had p-values >0.05.
¹ Male circumcision prevalence was coded as 1 = low (<20%), 2 = intermediate (20–80%), and 3 = high (>80%).
² Regression analyses presented as natural log of HIV (prevalence/100,000 adults).

ISSN: 1471-2334