Herpes or Folliculitis

Hello,
I recently had protected (condom) sex with a female, and after 36 hours I broke out with 10-12 small bumps (around the size of the back of a pin). All the bumps have a pubic hair coming out of the middle of them except one, and that one is located right next to a public hair. They are all located at the base of my penis and on my testicles. That region burns slightly, although I’m starting to wonder if this is psychosomatic or a result of the washing and antibiotic lotion that I applied to that area. I first noticed these bumps 5 days ago and they seem to be going away by getting smaller. Some have even gone away. The bumps are round  and were somewhat shinny the first 3 days. I’ve had this occur on a few occasion in the past, and I usually notice them after sex with a new partner. In each case the doctor told me that its most likely Folliculitis. They saw no reason to test for Herpes.  Question: do these sound like herpes or inflamed hair follicles or something else? Should I get tested? If Follicutis, how do I prevent this? As I mentioned, this seems to happen whenever I have sex with a new partner, however this time it seems a little more widespread.

Thank you!

[Terri Warren, RN, Adult Nurse Practitioner]

This could easily be folliculitis, Ryan, a mild bacterial infection of the hair follicle.  The condom on all night could definitely have made things worse, for sure.  The pimple on your butt is probably just that, a pimple, as herpes lesions don't normally have yellow pus in them, but rather very often clear fluid.  

If the hair follicle bumps are getting better and fading without ever rupturing, that's a very good thing.  Herpes is by no means limited to hair follicles, it is on normal skin and have no relationship to hair follicles.  I hope it continues to get  much better in the next few days!

Terri

[ryan704]

Hi,

Three things to add to my above description;

1) Althought these bumps are located in my pubic hair, they are located about an inch down the shaft of my penis. The fact that I have a litte hair there seems to cause problems and irritation of the hair folicles when having sex. Is this common or have you heard of this before? It seems weird to me that these hair follicles seem to only get irritated when having sex with new partners. Maybe new bacteria?

2) This was the first time that I had sex with this person. I hadn't had sex for 5 months prior.

3) I fell asleep with the condom on, which may have further exasperated the problem since the elastic part of the condom sat on the spot where I have the irritation

with this all said, I am still a little concerned. I appreciate your insight

[ryan704]

I'm sorry for all the inquiries.  One last thing to note, in addition to the info above; I noticed yesterday a pimple on the lower side of my butt (between my butt and leg). It had yellow puss head like a pimple, but the yellow part filled the most of the top with no point. It was about half the size of a pea. It has since popped and now burns. It is like a radiating or pulsating burn, although I'm probably fixated on it. It’s a single pimple (no clusters).   I don’t know if this is an important fact or not, but this all has me very, very concerned.  

Lastly, the inflamed hair follicles on my penis ( from my posts above) are no longer red and they are shrinking. They are hardly noticeable and they never ulcerated – just shrank.

I would greatly appreciate your professional advice. Thank you