Here’s Why Doctors Don’t Usually Test for Herpes

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Here’s Why Doctors Don’t Usually Test for Herpes
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Here’s why doctors don’t usually test for herpes:

notes, these tests are becoming more popular because they are more sensitive than the usual viral swabs. “That test has excellent specificity, meaning it very rarely has false positives,” Dr. Johnston says.

“Antibodies mean that you have HSV in your body. It doesn’t mean that you are actively infectious or that you’re going to [have symptoms],”and professor and chair at the division of epidemiology at the Ohio State University, tells SELF. “It’s just your body’s way of controlling the virus.” If you do test positive for HSV antibodies, Dr. Johnston says to ask for a confirmatory test, like a PCR test from a blood sample. Only after testing positive at that point does she recommend disclosing to sexual partners that you have herpes. “A lot of times people test positive [for antibodies], they tell all of their partners, then they do the confirmatory testing…and it was a false positive,” Dr. Johnston says. “That really is a lot of energy to [expend].

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