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Herpes or something else
Hi I am a 35 year old male, and suffer from tiny painful cracks that often develop on my scrotum and at the base of my penis. These cracks in the skin are very painful to touch and the surrounding tissue is often red and sensitive. However the skin is always flat, and never develops into any bumps or blisters. Recently I also had some scaley, flakey and moist skin develop in association with these symptoms. The crack in the skin remained flat and small but became circular and open. I have some photos of this but was not sure how to upload them. The fact that these symptoms are recurring is quite troubling for me and I am worried that I have genital herpes. Do these symptoms sound like herpes or something else?
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Welcome to our Forum. I will try to help but I suspect what really needs to happen is that you need to have a trained clinician take a look at these lesions. As a matter of policy we do not comment on photos on this site- we have tried in the past and the fact is that photos simply cannot take the place of a direct examination. I glanced at the photos you posted and they do not look typical of HSV but, as I said, what is really needed here is direct examination.
From the sound of your description this really does not sound like HSV despite the tendency to recur. The location is atypical for HSV and is the nature of the lesions. The sorts of lesions you describe can occur with fungal skin infections which can both flake and tend to come and go or other local processes. They tend to be more common in areas of the body where moisture is common, leading to maceration and sometimes local swelling.
Again, this is unlikely to be HSV but to be sure you should seek examination by a local clinician, The sooner you can do this, the more likely the clinician is to be able to help you as it becomes harder to tell when lesions and irritation of this sort are healing.
I hope my comments are helpful to you. EWH
From the sound of your description this really does not sound like HSV despite the tendency to recur. The location is atypical for HSV and is the nature of the lesions. The sorts of lesions you describe can occur with fungal skin infections which can both flake and tend to come and go or other local processes. They tend to be more common in areas of the body where moisture is common, leading to maceration and sometimes local swelling.
Again, this is unlikely to be HSV but to be sure you should seek examination by a local clinician, The sooner you can do this, the more likely the clinician is to be able to help you as it becomes harder to tell when lesions and irritation of this sort are healing.
I hope my comments are helpful to you. EWH
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Glad to help. EWH
Thanks Doc.
I have uploaded some photos of some of my symptoms on my profile site. I hope these can help to establish a reliable diagnosis. Thank you.
You are reading content posted in the STDs Forum
Herpes spreads by oral, vaginal and anal sex.
Herpes sores blister, then burst, scab and heal.
STIs are the most common cause of genital sores.
Millions of people are diagnosed with STDs in the U.S. each year.
STDs can't be transmitted by casual contact, like hugging or touching.
Syphilis is an STD that is transmitted by oral, genital and anal sex.
