![]() If it’s not one of these tests, don’t get it. The American Social Health Association has a great guide to the brand names of the reliable tests. This is the gold standard, but only performed at the University of Washington. The University of Washington (the mecca of herpes research) also offers a Western Blot test for herpes antibodies. It is unfortunately not illegal to offer a useless test and some providers just don’t know the difference and may just tick off the first box for “herpes” that they see. There are labs that will run tests that are not type specific, but these are essentially useless. This test can reliably distinguish between herpes 1 and herpes 2 antibodies. What you need to know about blood testing before you have it:ġ) There is only one reliable and commercially available type of blood test for herpes antibodies called a Type Specific IgG. Now keep in mind that most people with herpes are unaware they have been infected because most people don’t get recurrent cold sores on their lips or genitals, most people have a silent infection and simply periodically shed the virus. The immune system produces antibodies in response to an infection, and so the presence of antibodies means that at some point there was an infection somewhere with herpes. Blood testing means looking for antibodies. One big area of misunderstanding is blood testing and herpes infections. I know people want more information, because I posted a piece in 2011 on the difference between type 1 and type 2 last year and it has over 48,000 hits and counting. When I lecture at a medical conferences about herpes I hear, “I didn’t know that,” all the time. Molecular virology techniques (particularly those using PCR) are likely to become the diagnostic methods of choice for both HSV infection and VZV infection once these tests become commercially available.There is a lot of misinformation about herpes, both among health providers and the general public. Immunomorphologic techniques have been useful adjuvant methods for both the diagnosis and the differentiation of HSV and VZV infections. The fluorescent antibody to membrane antigen test and viral tissue culture have been the principal methods for diagnosing VZV infection. The gold standard for establishing the diagnosis of HSV infection has been the viral tissue culture. ![]() Serologic tests traditionally do not have a major role in the diagnosis of HSV infection yet, new type-specific methods using Western blot assays may be useful for confirming the presence of unrecognized, subclinical HSV2 infections that are presently being underdiagnosed by current procedures. An expedient, slightly more expensive, reliable technique for establishing a HSV infection, yet not able to differentiate the subtype of that infection, is a recently marketed monoclonal antibody-based filtration type enzyme immunoassay (Kodak SureCell Herpes Test Kit). In the office or at the bedside of a hospitalized patient, a positive Tzanck smear preparation is an inexpensive, rapid, and morphologic technique for confirming a suspected diagnosis of a herpesvirus infection. Several laboratory diagnostic methods are available for the diagnosis, differentiation, and subtyping of HSV and VZV infections.
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