Thank you: Low Positive HSV-2 Confirmed False!

Hi all,

This is my first time posting but reading the posts here helped me immensely.  I'm adding my own story in hopes that it will keep hope alive for anyone else who finds themselves in the position that I was in for the past two weeks.

I am 2 months in to a new relationship.  I had no symptoms of anything, but as a precaution I got a full panel of STD testing just to be safe.  To my complete shock, my Herpeselect HSV-2 came back positive at 1.4 (HSV-1 was negative).  I couldn't get another appointment with my doctor for almost a week, and when I finally got there, she knew nothing about Herpes, herpes testing, or the high possibility that with a "score" in that range there is a high probability that it is a false positive.

I spent two weeks researching Herpes, and thinking back on every itch and ingrown hair I ever had, wondering if maybe they were really herpes outbreaks that I had overlooked.  I even stressed myself into feeling tingling all over my body, and convinced myself that that was a herpes symptom too.

By the grace of God, I found this website, specifically this forum, which led me also to find on Google Scholar the numerous studies on this topic that have been published in medical journals.  Learning that the chances of the test being false positive was greater than 50% really kept me encouraged, and when I finally mustered up the courage to get a BioKit test to confirm, it came back negative! (and when I told the 2nd doctor about my first test, he was aware of Herpeselect's accuracy problems in the low positive range.)

I just want to say thank you, especially to you Grace, for having this site and making crucial information available to help people figure out what really is (or really isn't) going on with their bodies. Finding you was such a blessing.  Without you, I would have never gotten a proper diagnosis. For what it's worth, reading this website also made me feel confident that life would go on and I would be just fine if my follow-up testing went in the other direction.

I also just want to clarify a point re: cross reaction with HSV-1: I've read some posts (few here but many on other sites) saying that a positive HSV-2 score between 1.1 and 3.5 only is false positive when an individual is also positive for HSV-1. I'm living proof that that is NOT true. I was HSV-1 negative and my 1.4 HSV-2 positive result was confirmed to be false positive anyway.

Thanks again, and all the best to everyone out there!

[yi3o8]

I would also like to thank Grace... I respect that she's spending time she doesn't have to to inform people during what can be a difficult time.

[gracefromHHP]

glad you found accurate info, followed up on it and got NEGATIVE results!!! woohoo!

If you could do me a favor and just post a link to this post in this ongoing post on the low positive issues, it would be greatly appreciated so folks can easily find this post to see what your own experience has been :)   http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Herpes/low-positives---confirmatory-results/show/1097724?personal_page_id=873762#post_5060604  ; I'm trying to keep things linked to that since I have that posted in my journal for folks to hopefully more easily find.

grace

[grateful84]

Done. Thanks again!

[gracefromHHP]

thank you for doing that :)

[hopeful845]

My test results came out the first test as a 1.16 and now a 1.09.  Where can I get the biokit?  I have never had any symptoms and for the past 4-5 months I have been miserable thinking i carry this virus.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.