“HSV 1 Positive IGG?”

Thanks for the question.
HSV 1 traditionally causes cold sores. However, it is most often without symptoms. It is spread by direct contact - skin to skin. So it can cause genital or oral blisters or ulcers. It hides out in nerve cells, and can come out with fever or stress any time after the initial infection, even years later. But it generally is not contagious except when a blister or ulcer is evident. There are local and systemic treatments, but no permanent cure.

This means that you have been infected with Herpes Simplex I. Traditionally linked to fever blisters on lips (after an initial stomatitis) that tend to recur from time to time. Sometimes Herpes simplex I can cause genital herpes (usually itchy/painful blisters or ulcers) or even elsewhere on the body. Herpes simplex viruses are a lifelong infection that most of us have. Some have frequent outbreaks, others few or no outbreaks. You seem to be in the latter group. I suggest that you tell your future partner before intimacy that you have never had clinical Herpes, but that you have a test that suggests you have it.... And what about your future partner? Does he have Herpes too?

Herpes simplex antibodies do not diagnose anything since type 1 antibodies are found in > 80% of the population. The test should never have been ordered. Regardless, type one is associated with cold sores, not STDs. Forget it.

Carl Lauter, MD, MACP, FAAAAI, FIDSA