Welcome to the group, Nan!

I don't believe there is any difference at all between Arginine and L-arginine.
I think it is just a matter of what the person bothers to spell out.  I think
the L just indicates that it is an amino acid.

In some cases, somewhere, arginine was shown to assist the virus in becoming
active.  Lysine, on the otherhand was shown to keep the virus from replicating.
However, this is not always true for everyone.  So, some people do react
strongly to arginine and others don't.  Some people use lysine to stop their
outbreaks and other people don't see a difference with it at all.  It all just
depends on what is triggering your outbreaks.

Congratulations on meeting an enlightened person.  :) So that's so terrific that
he isn't bothered by the virus.  I'm sure he takes comfort in knowing that you
are doing what you can to keep from passing it on to him.

Take care,
ar

Some folks believe in special diets or things to avoid but to be honest I
don't avoid any of those things and I don't get outbreaks because of it so I
think you just have to take that type of information with a grain of salt
and stick to what has been proven and what you personally know works for
you. :)

I am married to an HSV-2 negative partner and when we were dating (after we
got serious) I too stayed on suppressive therapy with Valtrex taking 500 mg
daily. We also used condoms in addition to that and it was what worked for
both of us at the time.

Well.. I wound up marrying that man and am no longer on suppressive therapy
and we do not use condoms at all. So far to our knowledge he has not
contracted herpes from me. But, if he did contract herpes from me it would
not be a huge deal at all.

He once told me that if keeping me meant that he had to take a little blue
pill right along with me he would do it just as long as he got to keep me!
Isn't that sweet? :)

I completely understand where you are at and what you are doing. Don't
hesitate to ask more questions..

((( hugs )))

Angela :)

Depends what source you are looking at. Amino acids are chiral molecules.
That means they have a point where they can take up mirror images at the
level of the atoms in the molecule - imagine an amino acid as a letter T
with the long part of the T varying in length depending on the amino
acids and having tiny side bits on either side that differ slightly, if
you flip them along the axis down the T you can get the mirror images. The
two mirror images are the D and L forms. L-forms are essentially the
naturally occuring ones that the body will use in its chemical reactions.
D-forms can be made synthetically - chemists these days can make one form
or the other, or a mixture if they want.

Since the L form is the stuff you are after, and the molecule you expect
to see, it is often the case that the L gets dropped and the word arginine
gets used, it could also be used for a mixture of D and L, I guess.
D-arginine alone will probably always get the D added.....

Its the classical line....it goes back to papers like this
 Chemotherapy. 1981;27(3)pp209-13
Relation of arginine-lysine antagonism to herpes simplex growth in tissue
culture.
Griffith RS, DeLong DC, Nelson JD.

where they find in tissue culture that arginine supplements increased
activity and lysine reduces the activity of the virus and competed. The
concept bubbles in the background. Its difficult to tell as papers like
this show up...
 J Am Diet Assoc. 1987 Nov;87(11):1560-1
Assessment of dietary intake of lysine and arginine in patients with
herpes simplex.
Algert SJ, Stubblefield NE, Grasse BJ, Shragg GP, Connor JD.

where they decided it was impossible to track this sort of thing in the
normal diet as the US diet is low arginine typcially....I'd expect that to
have changed some in the last 20 years though.

You will find more data on lysine and even thats fairly scanty and takes
some piecing together but at least there is a findable body of work.

Most of the looking at this sort of effect was driven from before ready
availablility of the antivirals and most importantly before they were
getting used for suppressive purposes as thats really what they are
looking at for these amino acids...effects on recurrence, rather than any
given lesion.

Tim
--
When playing rugby, its not the winning that counts, but the taking apart
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