symptoms but repeated negative test results

[notsure808]

Hi Terri

I had unprotected sex a women back in  aug, 2008.  it was a single encounter.

A couple days later, I remember I was urinating more frequently than usual and noticed a single red spot on my penis. .  a couple days later I had more red spots .  I also got  a backache and tender lymph nodes at this point  and felt pretty tired and also had a headache.

Soon after I had both the igm and igg blood tests done (provider immunology). Both of these were negative.
That night (about a week since initial exposure, I had very intense itching  on my penis  and a few days later the red spots became blisters. All the blisters I got were around the head of the penis.

The blisters developed into sores which were very  painful. I was also on antibiotics and developed candida.

The first bout of blisters went on for about a month,one healing and the next coming on.

The blisters would take about a week or more to heal.  I showed my blisters to a urologist and he said it looked like herpes.
My next outbreak was in Jan 2009, I got the same intense tingling itchy feeling and two days later there was a blister. I used dynamiclear on it and that was the last blister till date.
. The only symptoms I got in 2009 were tingling, itchy feelings followed by a few marks on the penis.

I had another test in march 2009 and the results were again negative for both hsv1 and hsv2 (below 0.90) For my hsv2 IGG test it was 0.79.

I took another test on  the 18th of april  2010 and have got a negative result again .This test unlike the previous tests gives a value of 0.1 ISR for hsv1 and 0.2 ISR for hsv 2. The cut of value is 0.8 (above which is positve)
. I recently got another IGG test done for hsv2 & 2  and the values for both are well below 0.90.
I’ve had about 5 tests till date, all of which are negative. Do I have herpes but fall into that % of ppl who don't develop ever develop antibodies ?  could these symptoms be something else?


Thank you for your time.

[Terri Warren, RN, Adult Nurse Practitioner]

I'm just not certain.  The traditional test that you have had done misses about 1 out of 10 HSV 1 cases, much fewer HSV 2 cases.  So if you do have something, it is more likely to be HSV 1, which many people already have.  

Sorry, I don't have any other recommendations given your difficulty in getting a western blot.

Terri

[notsure808]

I have tried getting a western blot test but I reside in India and they don't seem to offer it.
Is there anything else I could do to confirm the possibility?

I got a negative test after two years so do you think the odds are that I don't have the virus?

Thanks.

[Terri Warren, RN, Adult Nurse Practitioner]

I understand that you are confused between your symptoms and your test results.  You need to get clear about what's going on with you, I believe.  I would recommend that you get a herpes western blot antibody test through Quest labs.  Depending upon the state that you live in, you can either do this through Quest or not.  The western blot picks up more HSV 1 than the traditional IgG antibody tests.  With few recurrences, you could have HSV 1 genital infection, and it needs to be ruled out.  

Quite honestly, the symptoms, as you describe them, do sound herpetic to me.  But what you might describe as a blister, I might not.  So its hard to know exactly what's going on here.  

Again, my recommendation is to get a confirmatory test to sort this all out.

Terri