I feel certain that Drs. Sagar and Overbaugh used proper controls in their
comparison.
James Michael Howard
On Fri, 01 Mar 2002 14:58:29 +0100, oswaldo <oswaldo at nospamiats.csic.es> wrote:
>>>James Michael Howard wrote:
>>>> February 27, at the 9th Annual Retrovirus Conference in Seattle, researchers
>> reported that "In a study of 115 female commercial sex workers with HIV, those
>> who were on hormonal contraceptives - primarily birth control pills or
>> injectable progesterone - at the time of infection had a five- to seven-fold
>> higher risk of becoming infected with multiple strains of the virus than those
>> not on hormones." One author of the study suggested this may be due to "birth
>> control pills [causing] thinning of the vaginal lining," while another author
>> says it may be "the hormones may change the cell population in the genital
>> tract, possibly increasing the number of cells that are targets for HIV."
>>> I suggest one more interesting hypothesis to test:
>> - Sex workers who use birth control pills are more likely to have
>intercourse without condom, both in their work and in their private
>life, and thus are more prone to get infected and re-infected with
>multiple strains of HIV.
>>oswaldo
