Hi John,

Someone who is better at reading test results will be able to confirm
everything for you better than I.  I'm sure someone will be along soon
enough.

In the meantime, I can offer my opinions.

This is the problem with some of the Elisa blood tests.  The older ones tend
to get the type confused.  So, you may test positive for type 1 when you
really have type 2.  The Herpes Specific Western Blot is the best test and
it will leave no room for interpretation.  It just says: positive for type
____.

However, the newer Elisas are more accurate.  So, it's hard to say what
happened in your situation.  If you could find out exactly what kind of
blood test you had done, we can help you more.  Also, are you sure the first
test said type 2?  Oh, and one more problem with the blood tests....they
can't tell you WHERE you have your outbreaks.  So, someone with type 1 might
not ever know if they have it genitally or orally or both, unless they have
visible outbreaks.

Now, to answer your questions:

Very accurate.  If you test positive for a blood test then you have herpes.
Depending on the test, the question would be, what type do you have?  If you
test negative on a blood test, you might have been tested to early on in the
infection for their to be adequate antibodies to count.  So, you would have
to be retested again.  It's best to be tested after 16 weeks of being
infected.  And the Western Blot is very, very accurate.

Have no idea.

Many people with genital herpes actually have type 1.  It's passed through
oral sex most of the time.  And as I mentioned above, it's difficult to know
where you are infected through just a blood test.

Exactly the same.

Take care,
ar

John,

You might get a faster response to your test results by posting them here:
http://boards.webmd.com/topic.asp?topic_id=90

Angela

Depends on the which brand and type of test you had.  It could be that
the first test you had returned a cross-reacted result (it confused
type 1 and type 2), or maybe it was just plum wrong.  I'd have to
believe the two subsequent tests that agreed with each other.  Sounds
to me like you have HSV1 genitally.

Hard to say conclusively, but it seems that you do have one of the
simplexes.

Yep.

Outbreaks tend to be less severe and farther between.  Many people
only report the initial HSV1 outbreak and then the virus seems
deceptively inactive.  There is still a slight risk of shedding,
though, which means it can still be passed on, and care should be
taken in that regard, but for the host it seems to be easier to live
with than the average HSV2 case.

Take care,

Mike

Hi John

I'd immediately request a herpes specific Western Blot blood test. You're
getting rather old ELISA tests, if they're listing both IgG and IgM
antibody.  There are much more reliable tests around...the most reliable one
being the western blot.

Hang in
-G