I would agree that we did not have any idea way back then of the impact of antiviral medication taken for an extended period of time. I am not aware of any correlation between symptoms and seroconversion.
Yes, because the commercial ELISA looks for only a single antibody protein while the blot looks for at least four to be called positive, the commercial one can be positive sooner.
I have seen one patient in all of my years of practice get genital HSV 1 after describing a history of cold sores.
I am not at all a fan of the inhibition assay. I’ve seen too many people have a positive inhibition assay with a negative western blot
Terri