The most important thing is that you should do if you think you have herpes is go to a doctor while you’re still presenting the symptoms. The doctor is going to view the affected area and will obtain a sample from the sores that are and have them tested to see if they present herpes virus. The test that should be requested specifically is a virus culture/assay for the herpes virus. The test isn’t going to work if the sores have healed so you need to go to the doctor while the sores are present.

The current known tests for herpes are:

• Antigen test
• Pap smear
• Cell culture test

The blood tests are going to be used most often when someone is concerned they have the herpes virus but isn’t presenting any visible signs or symptoms of the disease. In the past the type specific blood tests weren’t as accurate due to the fact that herpes virus antibodies (other) were confused like the:

• Chicken pox
• Epstein Barr
• Mononucleosis

Something that’s called the Western Blot has been the long held testing standard for diagnosis. The test was designed for testing of antibodies. The problem with this test isn’t in accuracy but holds its problem in cost and time consumption.
The FDA approved some other blood tests more recently which are much more accurate and are type specific blood tests in order to diagnose herpes. The newer tests cost 1/5th of the cost of the Western Blot testing, are faster and much easier to administer.

One of the tests is the POCkit HSV2 Rapid Test which is an accurate test in order to diagnose the herpes simplex virus type 2, genital herpes. The name of the test (POC) is for the Point of Care. Basically this means that the testing can be done directly in the doctor’s office and you’ll get your results in office in less than 10 minutes of time.

A test for HSV1 has been created too which is where the doctor’s office will take a blood sample from your arm. This has to be sent to the lab for testing so the test for the HSV1 will obviously take a little longer but depending on the lab you should still get them within just a few days.

One of the other blood tests is the HerpeSelect which is a test from a company called Focus Technologies. The tests aren’t able to determine the origin of a genital or oral infection though. Most all of the cases of genital herpes are HSV2 which is a positive type 2 result. This is something that is almost always indicative of a genital infection.