Herpes Risk

[Tony_2014]

Hi,

My encounter happened on August 30, 2013 and involved me (a male) messing around with another male. Most of the time we were touching and stroking each others penises. He did touch his penis and then touched mine right after. Also, I received oral sex for 3 minutes. Finally, he rubbed one of my buttcheeks with his hand. I am scared about having herpes. I took a Herpes Select test on October 24, 2013 and the results were as follows:

HSV Herpes Simplex 1,2 AB IgG 0.28 and
HSV Herpes Simplex 1,2 AB IgM 0.47.

Could someone indicate to me whether these results are good and what my risk for herpes is. I am worried because the second tests number is a little high.

Thanks.

[catinbarefeet]

If he touched his penis and he was shedding virus (which can happen even without symptoms), then immediately began to stroke your penis right afterwards, there is a chance he could have transmitted the virus to you. It would be a pretty small chance - the virus generally requires skin-to-skin contact to transmit. However, since it's also possible to auto-inoculate (pass the virus from one part of the body to another with our fingers), we have to consider the possibility that we can pass the virus from ourselves to someone else in the same manner.

I'm not sure why your technician called either of the tests "reactive." This generally indicates that the analyte (substance) they were trying to measure was positive. But you have two negative tests. The second number is actually not high at all - it's quite low. However, this test, the IgM, is pretty useless for the purposes of detecting herpes, as it can mistake HSV for other viruses, such as chickenpox or mono.

Finally, 2 months is still a little early, and false negatives are still possible that close to exposure. To be absolutely safe, wait 4 months past exposure and re-test, either with an IgG (good, especially if you use something other than the ELISA) or the Western Blot (best). Four months can be the time it takes for the antibodies to generate enough to trigger an accurate positive result on a blood test. I know it's hard to be patient, but if you want to be absolutely sure, it's the thing to do.

Good luck to you.

[Life360_Dave]

Correct

[Tony_2014]

Thanks for the information.

The only worry I have is that at the laboratory they said that one of the Herpes tests was reactive, but then they repeated it a little later and it wasn't reactive. The guy there said it could've been anything that did that, but I am worried. Does that indicate anything?

So to sum up, my chance then to come up positive later is extremely low?

Thanks again.

[Life360_Dave]

Hi, your risk for this was very low to contact herpes and your test at 2 months shows you are negative which is a great indicator you are infact negative. We use 3 months post exposure as conclusive but at 2 months your score is very very low. We only use the igG so disregard the igM.