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HSV 1 Question & Help (Blood Test After 45 Days)

Hi - How accurate are my HSV blood test results? Below is my story and timeline:

Day 0 - Had protected vaginal and unprotected oral sex with a new partner. Unclear on her medical history but she told me she was clean. I had never been tested for herpes before and had never had any signs of oral or genital.
Day 7 - Noticed a single small blister on my penis where my foreskin use to be (I'm circumcised). It was painless to the touch and seemed to just appear out of nowhere. A Doctor looked at it within an hour of me noticing it and suggested that it was from irritation, "maybe the way my pants were rubbing against my penis" was her suggestion. An hour later the blister had popped/was gone and there was just a small sore that looked like a scrape. Nothing leaking or oozing that I noticed. Still no pain or discomfort of any kind.
Day 9 - Still no pain, the blister never returned or multiplied. The sore quickly developed a small scab and looked to be healing like a normal cut. Another Doctor examined me, said it didn't look like herpes but took two swab tests and one came back positive for HSV 1.
Day 12 - The sore was totally healed (total time from blister to healed was about 6-7 days, no treatment was given).  
Day 45 - I had a HSV ELISA Blood Test and both IgG and IgM for HSV 1 & 2 came back negative.

The test's scale is:
11 = Positive

My results
HSV1 IgG 7 Negative
HSV1 IgM 7 Negative
HSV2 IgG 3 Negative
HSV2IgM 7 Negative

How reliable is the blood test at 45 days?
2 Responses
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Avatar universal
To add to and support TooHip's response, the swab trumps the blood test. It's more accurate than the blood test. Because it came back positive, I would definitely conclude that you have genital hsv1.

FYI, you are still susceptible to an Hsv2 genital infection, i.e. you can still be infection with hsv2. You have genital herpes but not the typical variety caused by hsv2.

Additionally, 45 days post encounter may not have been enough elapsed time to get a positive reading on the hsv1 test, but as TooHip pointed out, the IgG antibody test for hsv1 misses around 30% of infections.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
A swab test is conclusive. If the swab came back positive for HSV1 then that is what the sore was. HSV1 genitally is usually always spread by receiving oral sex from someone who has it orally. A blood test, the IgG, is only about 70% accurate after 12 weeks. It’s just not a good test for HSV1. I would believe the swab results.
The appearance of the sore about a week after the unprotected oral fits the timeline. Sounds like it was a very mild outbreak and HSV1 genitally tends to recur infrequently and doesn’t shed like HSV2.
Helpful - 0
1 Comments
So how long should you wait to get an accurate blood test result??
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