Treatments of Herpes
As of May 2018, genital herpes cannot be cured. There are, however, some medications that can shorten outbreaks including acyclovir, valacyclovir, and famciclovir.
Acyclovir
is an antiviral medication and reduces the pain and the number of lesions in the initial case of genital herpes. Furthermore, it decreases the frequency and severity of recurrent infections. It comes in capsules, tablets, suspension, injection, powder for injection, and ointment. The ointment is used topically and it decreases pain, reduces healing time, and limits the spread of the infection.
Valacyclovir
is a prodrug that is converted to acyclovir once in the body. It helps relieve the pain and discomfort and speeds healing of sores. It only comes in caplets and its advantage is that it has a longer duration of action than acyclovir. An example usage is by mouth twice per day for ten days for primary lesion, and twice per day for three days for a recurrent episode.
Famciclovir
is another antiviral drug that belongs to the same class. Famciclovir is a prodrug that is converted to penciclovir in the body. The latter is the one active against the viruses. It has a longer duration of action than acyclovir and it only comes in tablets.
We provide these tests for Herpes:
HSV 1 & 2 Antibody - IgG (Western Blot)
