Do you have any thoughts on trying to use a PReP protocol with herpes antivirals? I spent about twenty minutes the other day doing some initial searches (just duckduckgo didn’t have time to get into pubMed), and didn’t turn up anything. Valaciclovir inhibits viral DNA synthesis and is, I believe, fairly safe/mostly well tolerated.
Nothing emprical or quantified. From first principles it sure seems like it should help. There was one paper that claimed an antiviral reduced symptomatic days but not DNA shedding on symptom free days, which I found pretty surprising but didn’t have time to follow up on.
I normally see it spelled “valacyclovir”; I’m a little confused about how much sense it makes to take prophylactically because most people already have HSV antibodies from a previous exposure, but I think if you’re worried about HSV it’s probably worth it.
I think “everyone has HSV” is severely exaggerated. In the US it’s ~half? overall. Rates have been going down for a long time so younger people are less likely to have HSV, and for the demographic characteristics common on lesswrong readers it’s lower still.
Thanks for this, Elizabeth.
Do you have any thoughts on trying to use a PReP protocol with herpes antivirals? I spent about twenty minutes the other day doing some initial searches (just duckduckgo didn’t have time to get into pubMed), and didn’t turn up anything. Valaciclovir inhibits viral DNA synthesis and is, I believe, fairly safe/mostly well tolerated.
Nothing emprical or quantified. From first principles it sure seems like it should help. There was one paper that claimed an antiviral reduced symptomatic days but not DNA shedding on symptom free days, which I found pretty surprising but didn’t have time to follow up on.
I normally see it spelled “valacyclovir”; I’m a little confused about how much sense it makes to take prophylactically because most people already have HSV antibodies from a previous exposure, but I think if you’re worried about HSV it’s probably worth it.
I think “everyone has HSV” is severely exaggerated. In the US it’s ~half? overall. Rates have been going down for a long time so younger people are less likely to have HSV, and for the demographic characteristics common on lesswrong readers it’s lower still.