Abhisarika

Who would not jump at a remedy that could cure baldness – dreaded by most middleaged men and detested by women. A quarter of men in their 20s show signs of male pattern baldness, with six and a half million males in the UK affected.

Indeed there are preparations that help you overcome this problem. Finasteride sold in a number of countries as a cure for baldness has lived up to the expecations of millions of men.

But..

A recent finding from UK makes you sit up and rethink about using it any more. Young men could be risking their sexual health by taking a commonly used anti-baldness drug, claim some doctors. Newsbeat reporter James, 26, from Edinburgh, says “all hell broke loose” after he stopped taking Propecia.

“I went onto the internet and researched it. I found out there was a drug called Propecia, and soon enough I started buying that and it worked a treat.”

The prescription pill is extremely effective at stopping hair loss and in clinical trials nine out of 10 men didn’t lose any more hair over a five year period.

Drugs’ company Merck, which manufactures Propecia, claims on its website that less than 2% of men could suffer sexual side effects.

‘Completely impotent’. It mentions things like difficulty achieving an erection, but says the problems will go away for men who stop taking the drug.

For James, that was when the problems started. He’d stopped taking the drug after noticing he had less interest in sex – but he says things soon got worse. “After about three weeks all hell broke loose. I more or less became completely impotent.”

The testosterone therapy started by his specialist doctor didn’t work either. The doc now offers him a penile implant. James’s is not not an isolated case. There are doctors in Ireland and the US who claim cases like James’s aren’t unusual.

The manufacturers Merck claim those cases are extremely rare and could be caused by something other than Propecia itself.

But James is convinced it was his decision to take the drug that caused his problem. “It’s happening to lots and lots of men- and it’s about time people woke up to it.”

-courtesy BBC News

Sexual problems in women after treatment for gynecological and breast cancers are well-documented — pain, dryness, loss of desire, difficulty with arousal and orgasm, and changes in body appearance due to treatments.

Cancer survivors often struggle with body-image concerns, and don’t feel attractive or feminine after treatment. “Anything that affects the female sexual organs will have repercussions on body image and on a woman’s sex life,” says Emily Hill, MD.

A survey of 261 cancer survivors aged 21 to 88 years, published online in the journal Cancer, confirms that more than forty percent want medical attention for their sexual health needs but do not seek it. Some women have the courage to raise sexual concerns with their doctor, although repeated studies show they prefer the doctor to initiate the discussion – said Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago Medical Center and senior author of the study.

“Physicians will often empathize with a patient’s concerns, but struggle with a lack of knowledge about how to help. Doctors rarely talk with women about the impact of cancer on their sexuality”.

Many women also don’t discuss the issues with their spouse or partner. Thirty-five percent of the women surveyed were willing to be contacted if a formal program to address sexual issues after cancer were offered to them.

The results of this study demonstrate a large, unmet need for attention to the sexual concerns of women who survive gynecologic and breast cancers.

The risk of HIV transmission from an infected partner through oral sex is much smaller than the risk of HIV transmission from anal or vaginal sex. Because of this, measuring the exact risk of HIV transmission as a result of oral sex is very difficult. In addition, since most sexually active individuals practice oral sex in addition to other forms of sex, such as vaginal and/or anal sex, when transmission occurs, it is difficult to determine whether or not it occurred as a result of oral sex or other more risky sexual activities. Finally, several co-factors can increase the risk of HIV transmission through oral sex, including: oral ulcers, bleeding gums, genital sores, and the presence of other STDs.

When scientists describe the risk of transmitting an infectious disease, like HIV, the term “theoretical risk” is often used. Very simply, “theoretical risk” means that passing an infection from one person to another is possible, even though there may not yet be any actual documented cases. “Theoretical risk” is not the same as likelihood. In other words, stating that HIV infection is “theoretically possible” does not necessarily mean it is likely to happen-only that it might. Documented risk, on the other hand, is used to describe transmission that has actually occurred, been investigated, and documented in the scientific literature.

Various scientific studies have been performed around the world to try and document and study instances of HIV transmission through oral sex. A programme in San Francisco studied 198 people, nearly all gay or bisexual men. The subjects stated that they had only had oral sex for a year, from six months preceding the six-month study to its end. 20 per cent of the study participants, 39 people, reported performing oral sex on partners they knew to be HIV positive. 35 of those did not use a condom and 16 reported swallowing cum. No-one became HIV positive during the study. Due to the low number of unprotected serodiscordant pairings, all that can be said is that there was a less than 2.8 per cent chance of infection through oral sex over a year. In 2000, a different San Francisco study of gay men who had recently acquired HIV infection found that 7.8 per cent of these infections were attributed to oral sex. However, the results of the study have since been called into question due to the reliability of the participant’s data.

In June 2002, a study conducted amongst 135 HIV-negative Spanish heterosexuals, who were in a sexual relationship with a person who was HIV-positive, reported that over 19,000 instances of unprotected oral sex had not lead to any cases of HIV transmission. The study also looked at contributing factors that could effect the potential transmission of HIV through oral sex. They monitored viral load and asked questions such as whether ejaculation in the mouth occurred and how good oral health was. Amongst HIV-positive men, 34 per cent had ejaculated into the mouths of their partners. Viral load levels were available for 60 people in the study, 10 per cent of whom had levels over 10,000 copies. Nearly 16 per cent of the HIV-positive people had CD4 counts below 200. The study, conducted over a ten year period between 1990 and 2000, adds to the growing number of studies which suggest varying levels of risk of HIV transmission from oral sex when compared to anal or vaginal intercourse.

At the 4th International Oral AIDS Conference held in South Africa, the risk of transmission through oral sex was estimated to be approximately 0.04 per cent per contact. This percentage figure is a lot lower than the two American figures, because this figure is a risk per contact percentage, whereas the other figures are percentage risks over much longer time periods. Oral sex is still regarded as a low-risk sexual activity in terms of HIV transmission, but only when more work is done will we be clearer as to the risks of oral sex.

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