Herpes

Herpes is the name given to a group of viruses that lead to painful blisters and sores on the body. It is a common viral infection that can cause oral herpes as well as genital herpes.  Oral herpes is cold sores or fever blisters while genital herpes are genital sores or sores that occur below the waist around sexual organs.

Herpes is a contagious disease and spreads easily from one person to another. The herpes virus can be picked from an infected person through the mouth; vagina, urinary tract, penis or any cut or break in the skin.  It spreads very easily when sores and blisters are apparent on the skin. Apart from this, it can spread in any way even if there are no symptoms.

Herpes infection can be found in all age groups. It is not restricted to a particular socio-economic group. There is no group that can be said to have immunization towards herpes. From babies to children and adults, every one can suffer from herpes, depending upon the severity of infection or the place where it occurs.

Types of Herpes

There are two types of herpes caused by two different types of herpes virus;

• Herpes Simplex Virus HSV 1 – It can cause cold sores around the mouth
• Herpes Simplex Virus HSV II – It causes genital sores and blisters

Herpes is a very contagious disease and can be transferred from genitals to fingers, to eyes to other parts of the body. It can also pass from mother to baby at the time of birth.

Primary infections are those which occur for the first time in an individual. Non primary, or initial infections, occur for the first time on a different part of the body than the primary infection occurred, for example, on the lips, when the primary infection was on the genital area.

Primary infections of herpes simplex types I and II are transmitted through direct contact with a person with herpes lesions. There is an incubation period, a period from the time of the initial contact until symptoms begin, which varies from 2 to about 12 days, although in some individuals it is longer. After that period of time, the symptoms begin and they can be severe or relatively mild.

Diagnosing Herpes

Viral culture is considered as the most significant method for the diagnosing herpes. For a viral culture, the infected lesion is swabbed or scraped. The swab or scrapings are put into tubes containing human cells, which are kept in incubators. These cells are then examined intermittently by a trained technician who looks for special changes in the cells.

Normal cells, when seen under the microscope, have a smooth, regular appearance. When infected with herpes, they begin to show changes caused by the growth of the virus within them. Within 1 to 3 days, the cells become larger, rounder, and darker and they draw away from each other.

One can also see certain types of crystalline inclusions inside the nucleus. This transformation of the normal cell is absolutely typical of herpes viruses replicating within the cells.

Treatment Options for Herpes

There are different treatments for herpes infections. The more systemic symptoms, such as fever and headache, can be treated effectively with aspirin or Tylenol. But these treatments do not get at the root of the problem.

There are some antiviral drugs too that are used to control the spread of this disease at its root. Although there are many antiviral drugs used for treatment of herpes, but among them, four drugs are considered as the most effective drugs.

• Idoxuridine is effective in treating herpes infections of the cornea and conjunctiva.
• Vidarabine is the second drug very effective in the treatment of herpes infection of the brain.  It is also effective in treating ocular herpes, herpes of the eye, but is not sufficiently potent intravenously or in cream form to benefit most individuals with oral or genital herpes simplex infections.
• The third drug is Trifluridine that is a very effective treatment for ocular herpes.
• Acylovir is the fourth drug that has been developed within the last few years to treat herpes.

While all four of the antiviral drugs have the same structure that mimics the building blocks of DNA, acyclovir is more potent than others and is the first effective drug to treat some forms of oral and genital herpes simplex infection.

In clinical studies of intravenous acyclovir for treatment of primary genital herpes, the contagious period of the infection, when the virus was present in the lesion, was reduced by more than half, and healing time was reduced by almost half.

It has been proved that these drugs can be used in the form of an ointment for first episodes of genital herpes.

The function of these drugs is to block viruses that cause infections only. These drugs are not effective at the sites where viruses are present. There is a hope that such drugs will be developed soon that will overcome all the problems associated with herpes.