What is herpes simplex?
Herpes simplex virus is one of eight known human herpes viruses. It belongs to a family of DNA viruses that have infected humans for a long time. One of the somewhat unique characteristics of herpes is the fact that it establishes latency in the host, meaning that once someone is infected, the virus stays in the body for the rest of your life.
Within the herpes simplex virus group, there are two types: herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2). Historically, herpes simplex 1 has been associated with cold sores or fever blisters on the mouth and lips. And HSV-2 has been thought to be the primary cause of genital herpes. However, because of oral-genital contact, doctors are also seeing quite a bit of genital HSV-1.
What are the symptoms?
Most people who have HSV-2 don’t know that they have genital herpes because they either have no symptoms or their symptoms are mild and infrequent. But classic symptoms, which are present in a minority of the people infected, are different with primary infection and what doctors call recurrences. The primary infection can be a major illness with fever, chills, flu-like symptoms and genital ulcerations. These often start as blisters and then they break down into ulcers, or sores. In many people, the lesions hurt a lot and are very tender to touch.
“With a recurrence what we see is also an outbreak of ulcerations,” says Wald, “but the outbreak is usually smaller and doesn’t last as long.”
But it’s also important to know that there is a phenomenon called asymptomatic shedding. This means that the virus can be present in the genital or oral tract on days in which there are no lesions, no ulcers. And that’s when most of the transmission occurs.
