Herpes Genitalis: Genital Sores Are Not Always Due to Herpes
Chances are you are not familiar with the medical term herpes genitalis, but chances are that are familiar with the equivalent term, genital herpes. But nearly 50 per cent of Americans who carry the infection don't know they have the disease.
Herpes is caused by two different viruses, herpes simplex virus 1, also known as HSV-1, and herpes simplex virus 2, also known as HSV-2. Before 1960, medical researchers typically classified oral herpes infections as HSV-1, the milder virus, and genital herpes infections as HSV-2, the virus that causes more serious symptoms. But the reality of modern sexuality is that oral and genital parts often meet, and both viruses can infect both regions of the body. The medical term describes any HSV infection of the genital organs or anus, any region that would be covered by boxer shorts.
Here are five things everyone needs to know about this all-too-common disease.
- You can have a genital herpes infection without knowing it.
- Herpes is mostly transmitted by skin to skin contact.
- You can pass on herpes even when you don't have blisters.
- Laboratory testing is the only way to know whether you have the milder HSV-1 or the more severe HSV-2, which causes many more genital herpes complications.
- Herpes does not have to mean an end to your sex life.
As many as 80 per cent of the people who are infected with HSV-1 and 50 per cent of people who are infected with HSV-2 never develop blisters. That doesn't mean that these viral infections cause no symptoms at all.
The first time you are exposed to HSV-1, you may feel feverish, achy, a little like you have a case of flu. The first time you are exposed to HSV-2, you have lower back pain and maybe a tingling like you had cut off circulation to your buttocks by sitting on a hard chair.
But if you have a herpesvirus infection, you can pass it on during unprotected sex. Your partner may have a much more severe reaction, including blisters, after they catch the virus from you.
The most common method of transmitting the herpesvirus is sex. The sex organs have multiple folds of skin that can hold the virus, and this skin is tightly pressed against the partner. Rough sex can result in tiny cuts and abrasions that give the virus an easy entry into the body. Sex, however, is not the only way to transmit herpes.
Prolonged skin to skin contact during mutual masturbation or frottage can pass the virus from one partner to the other. Wrestlers sometimes get a kind of herpes known as herpes gladiatorus on parts of their bodies that are direct contact, and about 10 per cent of people who get HSV-2 get a herpes infection of the finger used to pick at a scab. Children can pass HSV-1 by sharing drinking glasses and by putting fingers in each others mouths. But by far the most frequently method of passing the virus is sex.
People who have herpes are at their most infectious one or two days before blisters erupt and one or two days after they heal. When the immune system is not particularly active, sometimes blisters do not form at all, but the virus is still shed and still infectious.
A blood test can tell you whether you have any kind of herpes at all. This can be very helpful in ruling out yeast infections, chancroid sores, contact dermatitis, and syphilis as sources of skin inflammation,. Making sure genital sores are due to herpes.
But for you and your partner to plan your sex lives, you need to know whether one or both of you has HSV-1, which requires fewer precautions, or HSV-2, which requires more. The only way to do this is to go to the doctor's office for a scraping of an active sore. Some labs use a DFA test that gets results in 2 or 3 hours, but most labs use a tissue culture, from which you may not hear results for as long as a week.
Couples who both already have HSV-2 often choose to engage in unprotected sex. In couples in which only one partner has a herpes infection in one region of the body, the choice may be made to use protection for some positions and not use it for others.