Can Oral Herpes Spread to Genital Herpes – Whenever There Is Intimate Contact, Herpesviruses Can Be Spread
Medical textbooks used to describe the two most common strains of herpesvirus, HSV-1 and HSV-2, as "
" and "
." Although oral sex has been around for millenniums, doctors and authors in the early part of the twentieth century wrote as if it was never practiced. This led to the description of the two most common forms of herpes as being exclusively oral or exclusively genital.
Can cold sores spread to genital herpes? When oral and genital surfaces come in contact however, any herpesvirus can be spread. The real distinction in herpesvirus infections is not where they are contracted, but how the body responds to them.
HSV-1 causes acute symptoms about 3 to 5 days after the virus enters the body. Children react to the virus much more strongly than adults.
A child infected with HSV-1 for the first time often develops a high fever. If the infection is oral, there is usually rapid development of gingivitis, causing the gums to ache and bleed and become friable ("crumbly") after a a day or two.
There is loss of appetite and the appearance of obvious red pustules around the mouth. The pustules take up to two weeks to heal, but the child continues to be capable of transmitting the virus for three weeks.
Adults infected with HSV-1 for the first time usually develop a mild fever. They may feel tired and achy, and develop a sore throat. Blisters, however, only occur in about 10 per cent of adults who are infected for the first time with HSV-1 (having missed it when they were children). Once you have had an oral HSV-1 infection, your immune system protects you against genital HSV-1 infection, but it does not protect you against HSV-2
HSV-1 and HSV-2 can both cause a genital herpes outbreak, and the body's response to the first infection of either strain of the virus is more or less the same. Most women who contract a genital herpesvirus develop cervical irritation. In women, HSV-1 is more likely to cause a bladder infection, with retained urine and dribbling as chief symptoms, than HSV-2.
During their first genital infection with herpes causing genital herpes lesions, most men develop blisters from the tip along the shaft of the penis and on the anus, buttocks, and thighs. In drier areas, the blisters crust over. Men who receive anal intercourse may develop prostate infections. About 30 to 40 per cent of men who get genital herpes develop a penile discharge for several weeks.
HSV-1 and HSV-2 cause similar symptoms at first, but HSV-2 is much more likely to cause recurrent outbreaks. You can get either kind of herpes either orally or genitally, but the "genital" form of the diseases causes far more problems. When outbreaks come back, the symptoms are much more severe in women than in men.
Women get painful lesions on the labia of the vagina that can last 8 to 10 days. These lesions can infect sexual partners while they are active and for about 5 days after they have healed.
Men get itchy lesions on the penis that usually go away in about a week. In either sex, there may be one or two outbreaks every year or just one or two outbreaks in a lifetime. The trigger for outbreaks doesn't depend on the kind of virus, but rather which body parts are infected.
- Oral outbreaks are usually triggered by heat, either sun exposure or fever after infection with another disease.
- Genital outbreaks are usually triggered by stress. In women of reproductive age, they are more likely during premenstrual stress.
There is nothing exclusively "oral" or "genital" about herpesviruses. Person to person contact can spread the virus no matter which body parts are touching. The kind of herpesvirus you have, however, makes a big difference in the severity of symptoms you may experience later on.
References:
Corey L, Adams HG, Brown ZA, Holmes KK. Genital herpes simplex virus infections: clinical manifestations, course, and complications. Ann Intern Med. Jun 1983;98(6):958-72.