Study Confirms This Popular Birth Control Does Not Increase Your HIV Risk
The world has spent nearly a quarter of a century wondering whether Africa’s most widely used birth control method could make women more likely to contract HIV. Now, new research, conducted in four countries, including South Africa, has solved the riddle. The three-month shot Depo-Provera does not increase a woman's risk of HIV infection; prove the results of the Evidence for Contraceptive Options and HIV Outcomes (Echo) study. The findings were released at the South African Aids Conference in Durban Thursday and published in The Lancet. For decades, it was like there was a spectre among the data - something researchers thought they saw but couldn't entirely be sure. From South Africa to Tanzania, studies kept picking up what seemed like an association between the widely used three-month birth control shot marketed as Depo-Provera and HIV infection. A 2016 review of nearly three dozen studies published in the journal Aids suggested Depo-Provera users could be