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Cold sores aren't a big deal at all, and most of the time neither are genital herpes sores (unless you're pregnant). Both of them are an occasional minor inconvenience for most people who experience them. They don't cause complications, they get better not worse over time, and they are self-limiting in a short period of time. Don't kiss anyone with an active sore or let someone with an active sore perform oral sex on you, and you are at extremely low risk of having to deal with this minor inconvenience personally. Your friend knows she has herpes of the mouth. You don't have to tell her. She just puts that information into its appropriate context and concludes it's not a big deal.
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Nov 18, 2016 22:19
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 23:14 |
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Most people will have five to ten outbreaks in the first year after infection, with the first outbreak having the worst symptoms. Genital HSV-2 recurs more frequently, up to five times per year for the average person. (Genital HSV-1 usually recurs one or fewer times per year.) Outbreaks get milder and less frequent over time. If you're worried about transmission, take a prophylactic antiviral like acyclovir or valacyclovir (VALTREX) and use barrier protection every time you have sex. You're most likely to pass on the virus when you have sores, but you may also be contagious during asymptomatic viral shedding. Antivirals reduce both recurrences and asymptomatic shedding significantly. As for guilt, do you also worry that you might give people the flu every time you kiss them during flu season? (You're contagious for 3-5 days before you feel sick.) The best way to deal with apprehension about transmission is to take sensible precautions to prevent it, inform your partner of the risk, and then trust them to make their own decisions since they're (I hope) an adult.
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Nov 18, 2016 23:47
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Psycho Society posted:You don't actually (usually) get herpes from drinking out of the same glass as someone. The virus can only survive outside the warmth of the body for about 12 seconds. So just wait a tidge before hitting that joint or whatever and you'll be fine. If they're not symptomatic the chances are even less. No strain of HSV commonly causes damage to the reproductive system and most explanations for common behaviour that centre around some kind of weird evolutionary theory are apocryphal nonsense. HSV can live on dry inanimate surfaces for between a few hours and eight weeks.
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Nov 22, 2016 04:24
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Psycho Society posted:Source? This is contrary to everything I've read. The Public Health Agency of Canada.
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Nov 22, 2016 16:33
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Goosed it. posted:Yeah I was going to say this. Also, just to add that we actually don't know that much about the differences between hsv-1 and hsv-2 re transmission. We now know that hsv-1 (traditional genital herpes) can be spread when asymptomatic, and before a person has ever exhibited any signs of herpes. We also can't really test for herpes when a person is asymptomatic. Furthermore, now that people are having more oral sex, there's way more hsv-2 showing up on genitals, which is leading some to speculate that hsv-2 might also be transmissible when asymptomatic. You have HSV-1 and HSV-2 confused. Most genital sores are caused by HSV-2, most oral sores are caused by HSV-1. It's well-known, and has been for awhile, that both are transmissible to some degree when the carrier is asymptomatic. A person with HSV-2 may be asymptomatically shedding the virus up to 10% of days, and the rate for HSV-1 is probably about the same but the available data are less clear. Contact with someone who's asymptomatically shedding is less likely to result in transmission than contact with a sore.
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Nov 23, 2016 15:23
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Is it possible you mean the HPV vaccine? The only HSV-2 vaccines of which I am aware are still in clinical trials. There are a number of HPV vaccines available in the United States, and here in Canada they're part of the routine schedule.
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Nov 23, 2016 22:42
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What I know about the HSV vaccines currently in clinical trials is pretty limited because it's not my area of research, but here's what I gather. There's one vaccine currently in human trials that's only effective in women (and we don't seem to know why) and that's only effective if you've never been exposed to either HSV-1 or HSV-2. It's designed to prevent HSV-2 infection but of course if it only works if you don't already have HSV-1 antibodies and you're a woman, it's going to have limited utility. Another vaccine is designed to reduce the incidence of both outbreaks and asymptomatic viral shedding, rather than prevent acquisition of the virus, so it's along the same lines as the shingles vaccine. That seems much more promising. I think they're both in Phase II trials right now - small-scale human trials to determine effectiveness. As an aside, I have to say, reading this thread has been a little depressing for me as a sex educator. I hope the people who've been confidently giving wrong information in here stop doing that. My favourite part so far (after the OP's hilariously upsetting deliberations about whether to tell his friend her cold sores are in fact cold sores, of course) has been the dude who challenged me for a source right after making a vague statement that "some people think" kissing somehow evolved as a way of spreading HSV-1 to protect against HSV-2 transmission.
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Nov 24, 2016 01:38
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Goosed it. posted:Sorry for the double post, can't edit. If mean, if your auntie kissed you as a baby ever, you've probably been exposed to HSV-1. I get cold sores and my grandmother apologizes to me for them every time she sees I've had an outbreak. (She's also prone to making statements like "What a damned nuisance; herpes again!" when she gets a cold sore, which is pretty cute.) It's true that it's probably impossible to completely prevent any exposure to HSV during someone's lifetime, but I guess my question is how much we care about that. It's also probably impossible to completely prevent any exposure to the common cold, but we still usually hesitate to share a drink with someone who's sneezing everywhere. I don't think anyone should flip out about herpes, of course; what I do think is that we should focus our efforts on sensible day-to-day prevention (for example, if you know you're currently infectious, don't have contact with anyone's mucus membranes, just like if you know you have a cold you should stay home from work), prevention of transmission to vulnerable people (like neonates, who can die from HSV infection), and reduction of symptoms/discomfort for people who are infected. It's not actually true that we can't test for HSV other than culturing a sore; we have a couple of different antibody tests, some of which can differentiate between HSV-1 and HSV-2. They don't provide very clinically useful information a lot of the time, though, since there's a lot of variation in incidence of outbreaks and asymptomatic shedding, so at best we could tell people they might be able to transmit the virus some of the time but we won't necessarily know when. That's one reason why we don't routinely screen for HSV antibodies like we do for, say, HIV.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:08
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 23:14 |
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WeAreTheRomans posted:If you really want to know, the odds are pretty good that you contracted herpes from your mother's vagina during birth (unless you had a Caearean birth). Sorry! Is this the official sponsored thread of medical misinformation? Unless you were hospitalized for weeks as a baby, it's very unlikely that you got HSV at birth, because people who get HSV at birth tend to get extremely ill and/or die. You don't get asymptomatic infections until you have an immune system.
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Nov 25, 2016 17:23
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