Herpes Simplex Diagnosis and Testing

Herpes Simplex Diagnosis & Testing

There are several tests that are used to diagnose herpes, some are more accurate then others. Lots of people need to be tested more than once.

Blood tests are generally used in cases where no visible symptoms are present. A blood test works by detecting the presence of herpes antibodies. There is a possibility that the virus will not show up in a blood test, and a positive result is not always indicative that a person has genital herpes.

Firstly, after exposure to herpes, a person may take several weeks to develop the antibodies that the test looks for. Usually, it takes two weeks to three months after exposure to herpes for antibodies to appear in the blood. Some blood tests detect antibodies sooner than others.

Secondly, blood tests cannot tell the difference between the two types of Herpes Simplex. For this reason, anyone seeking an accurate diagnosis of genital herpes must be sure to get a type-specific serologic test, which can accurately distinguish between Herpes Simplex 1 antibodies and Herpes Simplex 2 antibodies. Most commercially available kit assays currently cannot make this distinction despite their claims.

If Active Symptoms. are present and the sores are not healed one should request a specific viral culture or assay for the herpes virus. A viral culture looks for the presence of the virus in the lesion. This method is very specific and does not frequently give a positive result when something else is the culprit.

The viral culture often misses herpes even when it is present. Often a patient who has received a negative culture result will be asked to come back again when a new genital lesion appears so the culture can be tried a second or third time.

Please seek immediate professional help if genital herpes is suspected. Some of the available diagnostic procedures become less reliable the longer you wait.

Herpes Simplex Diagnosis & Testing

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