Sometimes Negative is Good

[errantember]

True to their word, I got my tSTD results today, and I'm still negative for all 7 things they test for! They don't test for HPV, and God knows we need better screening for that. Hopefully with all the recent hooplah surrounding it, they'll add it soon.

Some people had requested more details on the experience. I went online to find the nearest sampling station and pay my $250. I was given my confidential PIN, and then had to make a brief phone call to tSTD. They confirmed my payment and let me know that the clinic I was going to required a name, but I could use any name I wanted. I gave them a name, and they faxed the request directly to the clinic. Two hours later, I was at the clinic having my blood drawn and peeing in a cup. I'm fairly certain they use the same network of clinics/labs that many doctors use. The place I went was on James Casey. It was a little run-down looking, but otherwise the experience was fine. After 2-3 business days, they either call or e-mail you to let you know your results are available. At that point, you have to call them to get the results verbally first, before they release them onto the website. The results are delivered by a counselor who presumably knows what to say if you test positive for something. Both times on the phone the wait was less than 5 minutes. After the phone call, the results are released on the website (indexed only by your PIN) for printing and framing.

Comments

yay negative!

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

According to the nurse that did my exam at PP this year, PP does not test for herpes because it is useless to do so unless you have an actual outbreak. 90% of adults have been exposed to herpes, but only 25% actually have genital herpes, and there's no test that can tell the difference between the two. Have you heard any different?

Re: yay negative!

[errantember.livejournal.com]

The test they use is the HerpeSelect, which is a blood antibody test. This means it will only give you a positive if your body has had time to produce antibodies (which I think takes like six weeks) but after that it can not only diagnose whether or you you have it irrespective of symtoms, but it can differentiate between Type I and Type II.

http://www.questdiagnostics.com/hcp/topics/herpeselect/herpeselect.html

Re: yay negative!

[jenmarie.livejournal.com]

Yep, the only thing it doesn't tell you is, if you're positive, where it resides in your body. As you can have either simplex in either location, that can't be ascertained without active lesions to culture, but the HerpeSelect test is really fantastic otherwise.

Good mentioning that it does have a delay period before an exposure will give you a positive result on the test, meaning if someone has a possible exposure and they go right away to get tested, it might get missed.

tSTD is the bomb. I like that you get printable results and that their testing is both anonymous and comprehensive. I've used them a few times now.

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

What the PP nurse said, and I clarified to make sure I understood her correctly, is that 90% of the adult population would test positive for antibodies because we've been exposed. But that only a fraction of that actually have the virus itself.
But both you and K have tested negative recently and those are not good odds according to the above. This test must work differently than what PP was talking about.

...and I've been tested negative for them...

[errantember.livejournal.com]

...twice now, which reduces the likelyhood of a false negative even more.

It's also worth mentioning that I got cancer sores inside my mouth (as opposed to on my lip) for years. The main reason I don't get them now is because I used toothpaste without Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and because I take L-Lysine supplements a few times a week. Cancer sores inside the mouth aren't herpes, but cold sores on the lip generally are.

[jb-27.livejournal.com]

IMO, Having antibodies because you've been exposed and "actually having the virus itself" should be assumed to be the same thing.

Not everyone who is infected has outbreaks, but just because a person doesn't have an active lesion doesn't mean that they're not contagious. Asymptomatic shedding occurs on average between 3 and 10 days per year, so the risk of asymptomatic contagion is low, but not nonexistent. What I'm getting at here is that, even if you've never had an outbreak, if you test positive, you could be contagious.

On the other hand, if you test negative to both T1 and T2, you can be assured that you are not contagious, which is always nice to know.

I agree that just knowing the type doesn't tell you anything about the site, since you can get both types in any location (with T1-oral and T2-genital being the most common). However, given that most of us mix Genital-Genital and Oral-Genital contact, it doesn't matter much to me. If you test positive, chances are that it's either on your mouth or your genitals, and if you have sex with me, chances are that both of those are going to be on my genitals, ergo, if you test positive, you could infect me. (Actually, I'm already positive for T1-genital and oral, so perhaps I'd be infecting you.)

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

IMO, Having antibodies because you've been exposed and "actually having the virus itself" should be assumed to be the same thing.
That's what I thought, too. But she was very clear that it was not the case. *shrug*

[jb-27.livejournal.com]

To each their own. The nurse's position is inconsistent with my understanding. To put it more bluntly, I think she's wrong.

It's definitely possible...

[errantember.livejournal.com]

...that *sometimes* when exposed the virus, the body manages to fight it off *before* it actually becomes permanently resident. In that case, the antibodies would still be in the bloodstream for a while, but the person might not actually have the virus present in their system at all. This is totally hypothetical, but not unreasonable, since the body does have *some* ability to affect the herpes virus with it's immune system.

And naturally, it puts us in that wonderful "the test doesn't really tell me everything I want to know" category.

[erosissa.livejournal.com]

I love tSTD. Joshua and I used them, too, and I recommend them to everyone. :-)

[jb-27.livejournal.com]

I love tSTD and find it to be a fantastic value for the money.

Regarding HPV screening, isn't it the case that the virus is so prevalent that doctors essentially use it as a marker of sexual activity? In other words, doctors assume that if you're fucking, you have HPV, and vice versa. If that's true, then there wouldn't be much of a point in getting an HPV test, right? What am I missing?

HPV causes most types of cervical cancer...

[errantember.livejournal.com]

...and there are reasons to think it might be linked to throat cancer (dammit! dammit!) Almost everybody has it at one time in their life or another, and most people's immune system fights it off in about a year. Only a few of the many, many strains are known to be cancer-causing, and it would definitely be helpful to know who has those.