Whew, good to know it wasn’t us!
I would say, given your circumstances, yes, there is about a 2-3 % chance that you will contract herpes in a year and therefore, a 97-98% chance you won’t. This is not cumulative, by the way. Shaving was not included as a variable in the research project that sorted this out.
The blood test would be about 75% accurate at 8 weeks.
Correct, antiviral therapy will reduce the risk of transmission by about 48%. With you having HSV 1 already, a new HSV 2 acquisition would likely to minor or asymptomatic. All this means is that it would be good for your to be tested periodically or at the end of the relationship to see if you’ve become infected and didn’t know it.
I would disagree that the numbers don’t mean anything. If the index value on the test was 1.1 to 3.5, this could be a false positive. 50% of positives in the range are false positives. Number variability above that don’t mean anything in particular. Low numbers could also indicted new infection. I was wondering what your boyfriends values are, since he has had no symptoms. How about if you get those for me? If he’s been infected for a long times, he may be somewhat less infectious, very difficult to know in your particular situation.
Terri