http://eatg.org/eatg/Global-HIV-News/HI ... -treatment

http://eatg.org/eatg/Global-HIV-News/HI ... l-shedding

Reading this report, it appears that taking daily valacyclovir is just minorly more effective than treating herpes outbreaks that not taking it?

Also I have a older friend that is taking daily valacyclovir and according to him and his doctor it is making his hair go grey faster, is this true?

no, herpes antivirals do not make hair go gray faster. they disrupt the viral replication cycle, not affect anything about hair graying. probably easier for your friends provider to tell him well sure it's the antivirals than to say no dude you are just unlucky. remind your friend that there is a degree of graying in men that looks incredibly sexy too

As for the articles on suppressive therapy not eliminating viral shedding completely, I think there is a big difference between disappointment amongst researchers and real use of antivirals by people who have herpes ( hope this makes sense, woke up at 2 a.m and this might only be clear in my mind...lol ). As someone with herpes, getting the risk to a partner down to 2-5%/year depending on gender is incredibly significant though certainly not 100% ( this is the risk based only on avoiding sex during obvious symptoms and using suppressive therapy without condoms thrown in ). would it be lovely if we found a herpes medication that completely eliminated viral shedding for herpes? well sure it would be! cutting a partners risk in half of contracting herpes is significant even if the reduction in shedding is still disappointing to researchers.

betsy

_________________
ASHA Moderator

Thanks Betsy for your input.

Is there any other research that has been done to coorelate HSV to other conditions, such as a higher risk for cancer? I've not found any, and I know that research has made a loose coorelation of HPV to cervical cancer in women, so just curious if you knew of any reports out there. In my opinion the HPV-Cancer association was done to get more funding since they can coorelate a life threatening condition to HPV. Politics.

no real significant research tying herpes to anything else that I'm aware of. some loose things but the problem is, since almost everyone has hsv1 by the time they hit retirement age when most things like alzheimers and heart disease start to be evident, no duh most people who have those conditions have herpes simplex. we do know that having hsv2 makes hiv more active and that's where most of the research with herpes is right now because they can get funding to do that research. with all 3 herpes antivirals generic now, no funding by drug companies to do much research at this point.

hpv got a lot of funding because of the hpv vaccines and testing. they were able to group a heck of a lot of studies under the heading of vaccine research to get the funding to cover it all.

betsy

_________________
ASHA Moderator