I'd pay to post to Terri Warren, our herpes expert here on medhelp about your blood test results. she is a little more involved in the blood testing issues than Hunter is and she's done a lot of the studies with them in her clinic even. low positives for hsv2 are oftentimes false positives. best thing to do is the next time you have your oral symptoms, be seen for a lesion culture within 48 hours of its appearance to confirm if it's herpes related or not too.
anywhere from 1/4 - 2/3's of folks who have hsv1 genitally, also have it orally. if you have it genitally only, it provides significant protection against contracting hsv1 orally but we have no idea if it's 100% or not. Most people who contract hsv1 orally, don't get obvious symptoms to know it so studying the what we already know would be fairly low rates of infection later on would be very time consuming and very costly since it would involve frequent swabbing of the oral area for pcr testing so I doubt we'll ever see that sort of study done.
Oh meant to ask:
What about HSV-1? If someone has HSV-1 genitally, can they still get it orally? That is similar to my situation (although different strains obviously).
Thanks people appreciate it.
I gave oral sex to a guy (I am straight for whatever it is worth...one of the stupidest decisions of my life). Our genitals did not touch. Then about 10 days later I got a ridiculous sore throat with an ulcer in the back. Got tested (three times on the whole) with an IGG...a very low percentage and the levels were very low, but positive nonetheless everytime. In the year and a half following every time I got sick I would get a sore on my upper gum line.
What is strange is that I recently got a Western Blot done and it came back negative. But at the same time I did a Herpes Assay Inhibition test and that was positive. So four positive tests with low levels along with my symptoms makes me pretty sure I have HSV-2 orally.
Needless to say I am a confused fellow haha. Also, a separate issue, I struggled for a while on divulging my condition to potential partners. From what I've read it is very hard to pass on HSV-2 orally, so I questioned whether I had to tell girls I hooked up with. I know I have to though...so instead of dating in the "regular" scene I decided the herpes scene. All because I am scared to tell someone. Hence my original question.
*sigh* Life is crazy sometimes. I kinda wanna ask Dr. Hunter Handsfield but I doubt I would get any further info that you guys haven't already told me. Much thanks.
we don't have a lot of studies on folks who only have hsv2 orally. just not that many of you out there to make it feasible to study as well as we've studied hsv2 genitally. We assume that having it orally gives you significant protection against contracting it genitally later on but it's probably not 100%. Avoiding sex during obvious symptoms in your partner along with you already having hsv2 orally makes it unlikely that you'd contract hsv2 genitally though.
grace
How were you diagnoised with HSV-2 orally?
No you won't get it in another location really. You have anitbodies that will fight the new infection in a new location. Just avoid sex during obvious outbreaks.