2 Responses to “I Got My Blood And Urine Tested And I Tested Positive For Hsv-1. Can I Know If I Have Oral Or Genital Herpes?”

1. mayflowe Says:
   January 31st, 2010 at 8:13 am

   Hsv-1 causes 95% of oral herpes infections and 50-70% of new genital herpes infections.
   80% of us have it orally. A fair proportion of us have hsv-1 genitally too – both I and my sister do – but it is still more likely to be an oral infection because more people have it on the mouth than the genitals.
   Since you have never had any symptoms that you remember, and hsv-1 infection without a prior herpes infection is likely to cause some symptoms, that maybe makes it more likely that you have an oral infection caught in early childhood.
   You cannot know for sure, unfortunately.
   If you do have oral hsv-1 rather than genital, hsv-1 is actually more infectious on the mouth – it is it’s ‘home site’. It is about 5x as infectious as it would be on the genitals.
   Though you never have any symptoms, you will still be infectious for a proportion of the time – the average is about 16% of the time, though it is believed to be less than that if you don’t get outbreaks. So you need to be aware that if you have it orally you can still possibly give someone genital herpes if you give them oral sex. My sister’s partner gave her genital hsv-1, though he has never had symptoms of oral hsv-1. My boyfriend did have a history of cold sores, but gave me genital herpes by giving me oral sex when he didn”t have any symptoms.
   On the plus side, about 60-80% of adults have hsv-1, depending on your age. Those that do are extremely unlikely to catch it from you.

2. gallop Says:
   January 31st, 2010 at 9:22 am

   Genital herpes is typically HSV-2.

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