Are HSV-2 scars contagious after healing?

[Cooper35]

Hi Terri thanks again for taking the time to answer my question. I’ve been worried about possibly tramitting HSV-2 to my girlfriend as she is negative for HSV-2. We had sex yesterday and in doing so foolishly had unprotected sex briefly I saw no more than 3-4 minutes before I put a condom on. I haven’t had any outbreaks except for one about two weeks ago which healed up and left some pink scar tissue on my penis. How contagious would I be at that point after a week of healing from my last outbreak until now with only minimal scarring left? I am on supporesive therapy daily and know that there’s a risk anytime we have sex, but I always try to minimize her risk and I feel terrible about the possibility of giving her what I have. Any info you have would be great thanks.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Cooper35.

[Cooper35]

I should’ve clarified that my reoccurrence was April 10th and lasted aproximatley till April 23rd which by then had already healed and left me with the scaring and new pink skin that still hasn’t completly regained my usual skin tone. It’s been about 10 days since I determined that my outbreak was competent healed and the new skin left from the scarring would regain its original pigment within time, but in doing so I’m still worried about the possibility of transmission bc of the scarring and new formed skin.

[Terri Warren]

well, if she was going to have symptoms,she would likely have them by now. Are you taking daily antiviral therapy? If not, you really should consider this as it reduces transmission by half. You may have episodes of condom breakage as well as incident like the one you describe above. I think the risk with this encounter is low but best to be quite careful, especially around outbreaks.

Terri

[Cooper35]

Hi Terri and yes I am on suppressive therapy I take acycloriv. The skin was in tact and a slightly pinkish from the healing and that’s what was concerning me. Bc it seemed healed, but I was still worried about the way it looked and if that was normal or still considered an out break.

[Terri Warren]

Because we never know when a person is shedding virus, it’s difficult to say anything specifically about this area of skin, so honestly it is less important what we call this – an outbreaks or not – as we know that people can and do shed virus in quantities when they have no symptoms at all that are the same as when they are having an actual physical visible outbreak.

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Terri

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