September 19, 2014 at 4:24 pm #1391

Participant

Hi Terri,

Thank you for your response. Hope your travels are going well. I’m not going to restrict myself from dating hsv-1 positive women, but I would like to have an some idea about the potential for being infected in my genital area from this recent relationship and then infecting another completely innocent person. I would feel horrible!

I’ve read blogposts by Dr. Handsfield and Dr. Hook that strongly suggesting that in the absence of overt lesions, blisters, etc within 2 weeks of oral to genital exposure of hsv1, one can safely assume they were not infected with the hsv1 virus. I’ve also read that if someone didn’t have antibodies to hsv1 or hsv2 and were infected (ie true primary) with hsv1 genitally, they would show obvious symptoms that could not be ignored within 2 weeks of the exposure.

In addition, you wrote in a Medscape column the following:

“Most patients with genital herpes do not have truly asymptomatic infection; they have symptoms but aren’t tying them to genital herpes.”

1. When you say “most” do you mean like 70%, 80% or 90%? I feel with your many decades of experience you would have a really good feel for this.

2. Would you’ve expected someone like me if I’m truly negative for hsv1 and hsv2 antibodies to have shown symptoms by now from my recent relationship that ended over 16 weeks ago?

3. I’ve seen the odds of acquiring hsv1 through oral sex being quoted as 1/1,000 and even lower when no lesions are present by Dr. Handsfield and Dr. Hook. Do you think this is credible?