HSV confusion. Need help

[patient8888]

Dear all,

First of all, I must commend this internet forum. I have never came a better and well informed and knowledgeable forum on STI’s.

Im a 40 year old male who had an unprotected sexual vaginal encounter 55 days ago and a protected sexual vaginal encounter 25 days ago, however unprotected oral (receiver) in Dubai with a CSW.

About two weeks I went to urologist as I had both burning urine and ejaculation and felt perhaps I had prostatitis (as I had this in the past) or an STI. He subsequently ran a urine PCR tests, and everything came out negative for all STI’s except for HSV2 which came out positive. He did not run an HSV IGG or even IGM blood tests. What confused me more when I met him to discuss the results, he mentioned that I might have been exposed but not infected with the virus, which made no sense. But then again this is Dubai and you hear nightmare stories on misdiagnosed cases . He suggested that I meet with an infectious disease specialist to discuss and do further investigations. He also didn’t agree that my condition is due to herpetic urethritis. One thing though he did right is that he prescribed me a 500mg a day Levofloxacin for week and it almost instantly helped my condition. Although he was a quite friendly doctor, I felt I was more informed than him on STI’s given my research and thanks to this forum archive database.

I decided to visit Zack medical as I was informed they are specialists in STI’s and Dr Zack is quite knowledgeable and they run the best pathology tests in town. He decided to run HSV IGG and IGM as well as urine pcr tests and fortunately everything came out negative. He also suggested I return in 4 weeks and run another HSV IGG tests to confirm the result. One further note, I never had any ulcer or lesions.

Could this been a more lab error re first test? How accurate are IGG tests and IGM teats when negative? Thoroughly confused patient and would appreciate any guidance.



Thanks

[auntiejessi]

Did you have any urine testing done? There is a condition called NGU, which is non-gonococcal urethritis. It means any infection in the urethra that isn't gonorrhea. If you had elevated white blood cells in your urine, you may have had NGU.

That your symptoms were relieved by Levofloxacin suggests that maybe you had a bacteria causing NGU. It can be caused by a bacteria in the mouth entering your urethra, or other bacteria in the genital tract. Strep, normal mouth bacteria, E. coli, ureaplasma, mycoplasma genitalium (this is a newer STD that many still don't test for), among many others.

I would believe this happened above it being herpetic urethritis.

If you get another herpes test, skip the IgM. It's highly unreliable, and should be used anymore.