HSV false positive experience

[SecondChance23]

Hi, I just wanted to share my false positive experience since april of 2016.

Here's a few things to know about me:
     -I started having sex last october of 2015
     -I've never had a gyno check up before 2016
     -I had 2 partners before the current one

So, my family never really taught me the importance of check ups or birth control pills till early this year of 2016 when I've had enough my period trolling me. I went to the first ever gyno check up in april where they swab me and asked if I wanted to run the STD panel. I said "sure, why not. Better safe than sorry."

Then 3 days later, the doctor's office called. The nurse said, "o everything looked fine, except you have genital herpes." I went into shock the rest of the day after hearing that. Sure I've had unprotected sex, but all my partners said they are clean. My world pretty much fell apart lol During that time, I just started dating this guy, and everything was going great until I went to the doctor.

At first, I thought he was the one that gave it to me since he had more partners than me, and I've contacted both my previous partners to ask if they are negative. But after a month, my partner went to get a STD panels done too and came back squeaky clean. Which freaked me out even more. How did i contracted the virus if all my partners are negatives? I went to the same clinic as him and got the test done again. I still came back positive. But with a low positive of 1.25, the doctor at the second clinic is super sure that I'm positive for HSV2 and I've been infected for 6 months now according to the HerpeSelect IGG test. I called my first clinic and they told me I was positive with HSV2 with 1.29 from the first test I did, which was weird considered how IGG is supposed to go up in index value over time, but it went down 0.04 after a month. I started researching and found this forum and read up on a lot of people's experience in this. I read about the Western Blot and decided to get tested. The test cost 206 dollars and the shipping was around 80 dollars for me. The people from the University of Washington is super helpful, they even transferred me to the research department for HSV so they can listen to my situation and answer any questions I had. I think the money spent was worth finding out the result, instead of breaking down every week lol The university sent me my kit after a few days and I took it to the first clinic I got my pap smear done. My doctor from the first clinic was very kind to me and helped me filled out the form and got the serum for me to mail out. The result came back 2 weeks later to both HSV1 and HSV2 negative.

These past few months have been hell for me. And I'm sure a lot of people went through this same experience, where their life was flipped upside down because of the test at doctors. Please know, that the IGG tests doctors use at regular clinic have a high 50% rate of being inaccurate. If the score comes out between 1.1-3.5, there's no symptoms ever, or all partners are clean. Then there's a higher chance of it being a false positive. And most doctors aren't very educated in this. They just think a positive must be a positive... little do they know that the test they use only look for 2 out of 14 proteins in the virus.. while western blot from the university of Washington looks for all 14 proteins for the HSV virus.

I'm very grateful that I found this forum, It kept me sane the past few months. Everytime I felt like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown, I re read the posts people posted.

Below is the Link I found most helpful:

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Herpes/False-Positive-HSV-2-Igg-test-and-Western-Blot/amp_show/2020094

[feelingundone]

Thank you for sharing. Seems a very common tale....unfortunately. that's why it is important to seek out information as most Dr's are not very well informed on hsv or testing.

[feelingundone]

Congrats on the negative result.