Most anyone that is reading this is going to know whether or not they actually have genital herpes or not so that’s not really the point of this. What it is is that most people don’t know whether or not they have either HSV1 or HSV2. You might be wondering though if there is really any practical reason to find out or not.

There are a few reasons for this but the main one would be in the case that both partners have genital herpes. A couple like this is going to likely think that they won’t have to take any kind of precautions to prevent transmission from happening as they’ve already contracted the infection. The problem with that though is that one of the infected partners could have HSV1 and the other might have HSV2 so when having intercourse they could infect the other with the second type without even realizing it.

To make this a little more specific there might be one of them which have HSV1 which is a more gentle form of herpes and then could acquire HSV2 which is much more aggressive resulting in many more reoccurrences and more shedding.
Getting an HSV1 diagnosis after the initial episode is something that isn’t a very easy task to do though. The reason for this is that HSV1 isn’t a reoccurring one anywhere near the extent of HSV2. With this being the case being able to get an HSV1 culture can be almost impossible to get sometimes. Since many of the people that have an oral case of HSV1 doing a Western blot serology, which is a blood test) wouldn’t give a positive identification of a genital infection.

One possible solution to this problem would be a process of elimination. The Western blot test is the test that can tell if you have the HSV2 or not. If you’re negative through the blood testing for the type 2 but you’re positive for the type 1 it would of course give you a very strong indication of the source of your outbreaks.