Herpes disclosure

[skeas.livejournal.com]

The recent post about herpes brought up some questions for me.

My question is: Is it always necessary for an infected person to tell a potential partner?

From a theoretical standpoint, YES! Yes, yes, yes! But consider a few scenarios:

You haven't had an outbreak since your first one--15 years ago. As most of us know, herpes is transmittable even when the infected person doesn't have a sore. However, plenty of us infected people just avoid sex/kissing when we have a sore, and the other partner is fine. Do you still let your partner know about an outbreak you had at 20, when you are now 35? Do you risk ruining the whole relationship (because people generally freak out when the word "herpes" in involved) over a nearly negligible risk?

You have oral herpes. Studies show that 80% of us have herpes antibodies, and might be carriers of the disease without even knowing it. Yet I've never, ever heard of someone fessing up before a liplock. Do you let everyone you are about to kiss know that you have oral herpes? I personally feel like everyone is aware of--or should be aware of--a certain risk that's involved with intimate behavior like kissing or sex. You could catch mono, a cold, the flu, herpes, et cetera. You do what you can to prevent it, but it's still there.

For that matter, is there a difference between disclosing about oral herpes (which you can write off under the more innocuous name of cold sores) and genital herpes? Do you have more of a responsibility to tell a partner about genital herpes? And why?

Comments

[dictionaria.livejournal.com]

Well, I know that there's virtually no chance of contracting oral herpes when no outbreak is present, but I understand that the majority of people who get herpes contract it when their partner has no signs of an outbreak. (70% according to that commercial, which is urged on by profits, but viral shedding is apparently more likely with HSV-2.)

You're more likely to spread HSV-2 when showing no signs: "According to Spruance, people with recurrent oral HSV-1 shed virus in their saliva about 5% of the time even when they show no symptoms. In the first year of infection, people with genital HSV-2 shed virus from the genital area about 6-10% of days when they show no symptoms, and less often over time. (Both of these figures reflect shedding as detected by viral culture.)" (http://www.herpes.com/hsv1-2.html)

That article goes more in depth and covers some more technicalities, but with statistics like that out there, not telling a partner about HSV-2 seems like a bigger deal, while the majority of people have HSV-1 anyway. It's mostly social stigma, though, they say.

[sandi1743.livejournal.com]

actually we know that HSV can be passed when there are not outbreaks - the numbers that you are dismissing were all done on shedding studies and were published in peer reviewed journals.
check out the work of Anna Wald's group as she is one of the leaders in HSV transmission.

[dictionaria.livejournal.com]

Oh! I hope you didn't misinterpret my meaning! I didn't mean to dismiss any information, just to say that HSV-2 can be passed when no outbreaks are present and that this happens in the majority of cases, but also allowing for commercial propaganda, as not citing my source for that information would be rather rude of me. Then the quote printed after brings up some studies on viral shedding that I thought were interesting.

My knowledge of HSV-1, if that's what you're referring to, is only anecdotal. I don't have any numbers on that HSV-1 and the two do appear to be different in terms of how easily they are transmitted and such. I don't have any numbers to dismiss there, so I'm assuming you're talking about the 70% thing?

Forgive me, while I'm not sure what or how you were interpreting my comment, I had no intention of dismissing any scientific information. I am well aware the fact that HSV is passed when there are no outbreaks and was trying to get this across. I suppose I worded it badly.