Reply To: High HSV 2 Igg Antibody Test, Western Blot to Check False Positive

[interestedhealth]

Hey Terri,

Thanks for your response, and apologies for the delay on getting back to this initial post, I had to send the WB again a second time because of some issues filling out the paperwork the first time I sent it.

I just received a result now for the WB, and it came back Atypical/Indeterminate. I spoke with a clinician at University of Washington’s lab about how I should interpret the result, especially in light of the fact I had shingles, strep throat and a generally compromised immune system at the time around when I received the ELISA positive results. He suggested that it’s likely that those conditions and my weakened immune system could have tripped up the ELISA test to give a false positive, even though they are very high false positives. My understanding from my discussion with him, and my own research, is that the ELISA tests can return incorrect results for a variety of reasons, for example the presence of antinuclear antibodies caused by the immune system reacting to some other viral infection.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC179872/ (Panel D tricky samples).

Given that my date of infection would have been at least 5 months before when I received the WB, they suggested that it may well be the case I’m not truly HSV-2 positive, and that I should do another Western Blot in 6 months, and if that one also comes back atypical, or negative, I should safely assume for all intents and purposes I’m not infected. I wanted to write here too, and follow up to get your thoughts on this story, and the interpretation provided by the UW lab.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks!