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My story is unusual. Developed HSV2 three years ago. First outbreak was 4 months. Then it went away for 2 months, then was present for 3 weeks, went away again for 2 months and then returned where outbreaks last a month with maybe 3 days between ever since. Diagnosis was hard since the first swabs were negative. Doc told me it was HSV. He said nothing else causes repetitive sores and rashes in the genital region. I wanted confirmation. Quest Igg test x 3 was negative. Western blot at 7 and 12 months was negative. This was unusual because I thought I have has hsv1 orally. I only took valtrex for 2 weeks during the first year and so it should not have affected the testing. In year two, I took valtrex almost the whole time. It didn’t change much, symptoms were maybe 30% better but had near constant outbreaks with 2-4 days between them. I wanted confirmation, so they gave me daily swabs and one came back positive for hsv2. The doc said that this is 100% accurate and that nothing else causing symptoms like I have except a herpetic disease. I am now going into year 4 and I have symptoms 90% of the time such as burning, itching pain. Sores occur mainly in the buttock and anal area and resolve within a few days. Doc says hsv can cause weird symptoms. My questions are short
1. Have you ever heard of such symptoms in your practice?
2. I could only find one study in 1988 comparing the Blot to known positive patients, and it only included just over 100 patients. There are tons of studies where the blot is the standard but Are there any other studies confirming the blot’s accuracy and can you list them please.
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Herpes symptoms don’t last for months at a time. It is interesting that the blot was negative but you had a positive swab test. Have you had a positive swab from one of the buttocks lesions?
So to be clear, you had a positive swab test while on suppressive therapy?
Did you have sex at any point between the negative blot and the positive swab test?
To find information about the western blot, you can go to PubMed and put in herpes western blot in the search area. I’ll let you do that.Terri
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Since there is no known better antibody test, that’s a challenge. We do know that people who take suppression at the beginning of being infected with HSV can continue to get negative antibody tests. What is your situation with taking suppressive therapy as it relates to when you first got infected?
The western blot folks have never said the test picks up every infection – I’ve had 10 patients who had positive swabs and negative WB. But that’s after running thousands of blots over my 41 years in practice.
Terri
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