[Question #8119] Cold Sores & Oral Sex

48 months ago

Hello! To cut to the chase, I had protected sex with a girl who had a visible cold sore on her lip about 2 days ago. We were pretty careful not to kiss and we avoided oral sex. At least that was the plan. At the end of our encounter, as I was about to ejaculate, she for whatever reason licked the tip of my glans. It was one or maybe two licks. I'm quite worried now.

My question is, do I 100% have HSV from this encounter? I'm guessing this exposure had enough viral load and risk to assume I have it now? Thank you for the help.

48 months ago

To be clear, she had a visible cold sore during the encounter. So I was wondering if it’s possible to quantify the risk here? Would you consider this a high risk exposure?

Terri Warren, RN, Nurse Practitioner

48 months ago

The risk is going to be small if you just licked the head of your penis vs. putting your whole penis in her mouth.

We don't have the research to quantify the risk, sorry. There is certainly not 100% chance that you will acquire HSV 1 from this encounter, I would say in the single digits at the highest.

Do you know for certain that you don't already have HSV 1 infection?

Terri

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48 months ago

Thanks a bunch for the quick response. It was just a lick or two yes, and it was not in her mouth. I'm quite surprised by your risk assessment actually. I was under the impression that a visible cold sore means it's actively infectious right now, so it can easily pass through mucous membranes. Is that not really true? Was quite worried I 100% got it because of that!

I'm unsure whether I have HSV 1 currently. Never had symptoms so never really tested for it. I suppose I just have a couple more questions at this point,

1) So regarding this encounter, if I don't develop any symptoms for the next 2 weeks, can I assume I didn't get HSV? Or if I did get it from this encounter, can I assume I'm asymptomatic?

2) I heard that most HSV-1 and HSV-2 cases are asymptomatic to a huge degree. Like 70% of people don't have any symptoms? Is that true for genital and oral cases?

Thanks again for all the help!

Terri Warren, RN, Nurse Practitioner

48 months ago

The presence of a cold sore is certainly a risk, but if there was only contact with her tongue (a lick or two), then that's not the same kind of exposure of her lip coming into direct contact with your penis. It might be beneficial for you to find out if you have HSV 1 or not to help you through this period of worry - just a thought.

If you don't develop symptoms in the next two weeks, I think that infection is really unlikely. If you've never had either HSV 1 or HSV 2, I think it is likely that if you became infected, and you are looking carefully as I am sure you are, infection is unlikely.

It is true that most people don't recognize their herpes infection, correct. It is not true that most people don't have symptoms. Once a person tests positive for one or the other, many people can identify symptoms that they once attributed to other things or they are having symptoms in a location that they didn't think was related to genital herpes. For example, people with genital infection can have outbreaks on the buttocks or thigh and they don't think that is genital herpes. People with oral herpes can often have outbreaks inside the nose or on their chin and they don't think those are cold sores. I hope this answers your question a bit more completely.

terri

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