Treatment Resistant HSV2

[SundayMorning81]

Since 11/2022 (installed OB confirmed by swab) I have been on various dosages of Valtrex for suppressive therapy. I am currently on 1g twice daily and continue to have regular OB. By regular I mean I might go 3 days. As one heals, another starts and I have chronic itching. And I don’t have one location, I have several that occur simultaneously. My OBGYN and Derm are perplexed and I have been preferred to Infectious Disease because they cannot identify any other reasons for my OBs. And we have none local, so I must travel to a neighboring state for assessment. I am not immuncompromised, that I know of. I also have hidradenitis suppurativa and its been so inflamed since HSV2 diagnosis. I don’t seem to be getting much relief from suppressive therapy and I wonder what my options are in receiving medicinal relief if I’m not responding to the standard treatment, assuming there isn’t another condition exacerbating the HSV2. Would you share any insight that could lead to poor response to treatment? Thanks for your time.

[Terri Warren]

I seriously doubt that what you are experiencing are basically continuous outbreaks. Very often, people with genital herpes have symptoms that they believe are outbreaks, but when swab tested, are not. I would strongly recommend that you get what you think are outbreaks swab tested and if negative, do another and another. If none of them are herpes positive, then the symptoms are likely due to something else besides herpes. The reason I’m thinking this is because someone taking 1 gram of Valtrex twice daily almost always respond to treatment better than you are.

I will say that this is a common situation and the majority of the time when this was going on with my patients, the swabs were negative and we were able to identify another cause for the symptoms – fungal, bacterial, something else.

Let me know what you think

Terri

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