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HSV2 Retest: GET ONE if <5.00 on igg test!
I posted a while back about being confused as to a positive result of 2.82 on a HSV2 igg test. Never having experienced symptoms of anything like herpes combined with the skepticism of my doctor caused me to read up on this forum and found that University of Washington (somebody post the link please) study giving the percentage chance of a false positive for the different number ranges in increments of 0.5. My range 2.5-3.0 gave me a 40% chance of not having it!
Of course Quest Diagnostics tells you that you are 'positive' above 1.1. I admit it would be quite expensive for the company to tell everyone that their test has misdiagnosed millions of people, and that a lot of them didn't have as good a doctor as mine, nor access to forums like this one to convince themselves of the necessity of another DIFFERENT TYPE OF TEST. Not only do they not tell you about these chances, they also offer a DISCOUNTED SECOND TEST of the SAME TYPE in case you want to re-test. How f-ing altruistic of them huh? They get you one and a half times.
Anyway, got the Western Blot, negative...Hooray!
Point: If you are under 5.00 on an Igg test GO GET RETESTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And don't give any more damn money to Quest, they are scumbags, and stay away from those IGG (ELISA?) tests. If they weren't misdiagnosing 100,000s of people per year then the commercials wouldn't be able to say things like "1/5 American adults have herpes" or "80% [idk actually number they use] of people with herpes don't know it and don't show symptoms"...uh yeah... because a large percentage of that 80% DON'T HAVE HERPES.
Anyway I'm about to do the math in the next couple of days to figure out how many people per year are misdiagnosed, using the UW study findings, people diagnosed per year by igg tests (public I'm guessing), and what the spread along the igg number line looks like. Beyond that it just seems like simple algebra. I just hate to see potentially millions of people going through life thinking they have something they don't, all because it would cost a few pharmaceutical companies too much money to come out and tell the public that their test sucks.
Thanks for existing
Of course Quest Diagnostics tells you that you are 'positive' above 1.1. I admit it would be quite expensive for the company to tell everyone that their test has misdiagnosed millions of people, and that a lot of them didn't have as good a doctor as mine, nor access to forums like this one to convince themselves of the necessity of another DIFFERENT TYPE OF TEST. Not only do they not tell you about these chances, they also offer a DISCOUNTED SECOND TEST of the SAME TYPE in case you want to re-test. How f-ing altruistic of them huh? They get you one and a half times.
Anyway, got the Western Blot, negative...Hooray!
Point: If you are under 5.00 on an Igg test GO GET RETESTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And don't give any more damn money to Quest, they are scumbags, and stay away from those IGG (ELISA?) tests. If they weren't misdiagnosing 100,000s of people per year then the commercials wouldn't be able to say things like "1/5 American adults have herpes" or "80% [idk actually number they use] of people with herpes don't know it and don't show symptoms"...uh yeah... because a large percentage of that 80% DON'T HAVE HERPES.
Anyway I'm about to do the math in the next couple of days to figure out how many people per year are misdiagnosed, using the UW study findings, people diagnosed per year by igg tests (public I'm guessing), and what the spread along the igg number line looks like. Beyond that it just seems like simple algebra. I just hate to see potentially millions of people going through life thinking they have something they don't, all because it would cost a few pharmaceutical companies too much money to come out and tell the public that their test sucks.
Thanks for existing
actually they didn't change the ranges at all. they changed other parts of the test so it had less false positives. As to the specifics of what they did, you'd have to call quest and ask, I have no idea.
Quest labs submitted information a while back letting the FDA know about the false positive issue with their test. The FDA was ok with the test where it was at until more research and testing was done on the test. Unfortunately this research and testing is expensive and time consuming. Quest has already raised their tests from a .90 as positive to 1.1. I've seen studies where some believe 1.1 is perfect where others think 3.0 should be used for positive. Truth is there is no perfect test. Even on HSV 1 tests they still miss about 1 in 10 cases.
Question about your post above....can you explain what Quest has already tweaked in regards to their testing?
actually the studies that we get the info as to how many folks are infected with hsv1 and hsv2 don't use the herpeselect or the WB. they use a different test entirely that is not commercially available for labs the last I knew.
congrats on getting negative confirmatory testing! As you already know, we always recommend follow up testing to confirm low positives. You can Quest bash all you want but it's an issue with all of the herpes blood tests and Quest is the only one doing something about it - they've tweaked their test once already and have a major research study going on currently to look at tweaking it again. they are the most open about their false positive issues out of all of them. There are false positive and false negative issues with every single medical test your provider ever orders for you.
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Herpes/low-positives---confirmatory-results/show/1097724#post_5968138 is the link to an ongoing post we have for folks to post their follow up results to the low positive igg results. If you don't mind posting in there or even just posting a link to this post you made, then others can see that indeed we aren't giving false hope with the low positive issues but are helping them get the confirmatory testing that really is important for them - thanks!
grace
congrats on getting negative confirmatory testing! As you already know, we always recommend follow up testing to confirm low positives. You can Quest bash all you want but it's an issue with all of the herpes blood tests and Quest is the only one doing something about it - they've tweaked their test once already and have a major research study going on currently to look at tweaking it again. they are the most open about their false positive issues out of all of them. There are false positive and false negative issues with every single medical test your provider ever orders for you.
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Herpes/low-positives---confirmatory-results/show/1097724#post_5968138 is the link to an ongoing post we have for folks to post their follow up results to the low positive igg results. If you don't mind posting in there or even just posting a link to this post you made, then others can see that indeed we aren't giving false hope with the low positive issues but are helping them get the confirmatory testing that really is important for them - thanks!
grace
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Herpes spreads by oral, vaginal and anal sex.
Herpes sores blister, then burst, scab and heal.
STIs are the most common cause of genital sores.
Millions of people are diagnosed with STDs in the U.S. each year.
STDs can't be transmitted by casual contact, like hugging or touching.
Syphilis is an STD that is transmitted by oral, genital and anal sex.
