Herpes and condoms

[davey100]

What does it mean that you can get HPV or Herpes while using a condom. What does skin to skin mean? If your partner has a herpes lesion on her thigh how does it get into your body? Do you need to have open wound? Or is it like having vigourous sex where the thighs rub against eachother and causes an open wound.If it goes into the skin then isnt it easy to catch it on your finger if you simply touch it? Therefore you can catch it without sex of any kind? Last question  If your with someone that has herpes and always use a condom is there a good chance of catching herpes or is it slim?

[Edward W Hook, MD]

The answers are not absoulutes but probabilities.

1.  Transmission to the hand is much less likely than transmission to the penis on the basis of the type of skin present.

2.  Yes.  STDs are not spread through masturbation.

It is time for this thread to end.  EWH

[davey100]

Very educational. Last two questions.

1-So if a guy rubs his penis or groin area on a lesion he can get the infection because of the nature of the skin in those areas? But if a guy rubs the lesion with his hand he will not get the infection because the infection can't pass through that type of skin? Is this correct?

2-So all these women in massage parlors that rub the penis with their hands and no condom are safe from herpes because it cannot pass through the skin on the hand?

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Herpes enters the skin presumably through microscopic abrasions that, in most instances, cannot be seen.  Importantly however, it does not pass through all skin equally well.  The skin of the urethra or the penis is far thinner and more susceptible to infection than the skin on a person's scrotum or their hands. Herpes infections only occur at the places which come in DIRECT contact with infection.  they do not spread through the body or from one part of the body to another on peoples' hands.  EWH

[davey100]

sorry for not understanding please could you answer the following:

1-How does the herpes virus get into the body? if a woman has a lesion and your balls crash against it how does it enter? Do you need an open wound or does the virus break through the skin?
2-if you touch that same lesion with your finger and the virus enters your body at your finger does it travel to the genital area and stay there? or do you get herpes on your finger?

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Herpes and HPV are both transmitted by direct contact with an infected lesion/site (i.e. the herpes sore or a wart or HPV infected site).  Condoms dramatically reduce the risk of getting both infections because they cover the parts of the genitals which are most often infected with either HSV or HPV, thereby preventing contact.  So, how do transmissions occur? - two ways. First, they could be transmitted by contact with a part of the body that was not covered by a condom such as a lesion on a partner's thigh or bottom, either during foreplay or the sex act itself.  The second way is that there could be contact between an infected site which would ordinarily be covered by a condom before the condom was put on.

100% condom use for all sex acts will dramatically reduce a person’s risk fo getting herpes and markedly (but not quite as much) reduce risk for herpes.

Hope this helps.  EWH