I had one possible exposure in 2004. Coincidentally after 3 weeks I had one small blister with pus on my genitals. There was no pain or fever. Doctor then said it might be herpes and got blood test which came back negative. I tested few more times in the course of 2 years with blood test and all of them were negative. I had a massage in 2008 and one occurance of hsv1 test came at 1.2 or 1.3. I was having some cold and fever then. I went to my doctor and retested and blood test was negative within a week and another time after that. After 10 years now I retested and igg test is still negative. 

       So in all this 14 years I had one blister and a hsv1 positive at 1.3. There have been no symptoms otherwise (no blisters )  and about 9 times of negative blood tests. I still am very anxious and depressed. My doctor told me that antibodies may stop showing up in the blood test after all these years. How can I guarantee what I have after all these years, if blood tests have already seroreversed. Please let me know doctor what I should do. This fear about herpes has dictated my life the last 14 years

Thanks

Anil

      I want to add this. I had hsv1 igg at 1.3 in 2008. Within 2 weeks I retested at my doctors office and it was negative (igg). Can I say it was a false positive ?

I'm so sorry that herpes has dictated your life for all of these years!  Oh my, what a shame!  The IgG test for HSV 1 is not great and can difficult to interpret.  It misses 30% of HSV 1 infections compared to the western blot (the gold standard test).  If you have been worrying about this for 14 years, for goodness sake, get the western blot and be done with it and quit wondering.  Do you live in the US? 

So here's the deal though - if you test by the blot and you are positive, you cannot know if your infection is oral or genital.  It can only tell you if you are infected or not.  What do you think about all of that?

Terri

            Thanks for the quick response.   All the websites say that Hsv1 is 99% accurate with igg test. Only once did I get a result of 1.2 and now after ten years it’s atill negative. But information is so distracting such as there can be seroreversion, there may not be symptoms etc. with this we can never be sure.

With western blot, can it catch the seroreversion too if it is there? Would it be conclusive so I can finally move on. Please kindly help. Also let me know how to proceed with western blot. I live in USA 

      Also I wanted to ask if False positives are possible with igg test. 9 out 10 I had it negative and one time it was at 1.3

False positives are definitely possible with the IgG test, particularly at low levels like 1.3.  We have some great data on the rates of false positives at various IgG levels for HSV 2, not as clear data on HSV 1.  This test is NOT 99% sensitive for HSV 1.  It is about 70% sensitive for HSV 1.

I can work with you to get the western blot - you would need to set up an appointment with me at www.westoverheights.com for a video conference to get that process started.  There is a button on the home page that will take you to video conference scheduling.  Yes, the western blot would pick up seroconversion - that's why we order it.

Terri