Does genital HSV-1 migrate to lips?

[Yana234]

Hi everyone - I new to GHSV-1 and have sooo many questions.
Today I find myself wondering if this will ever somehow show up on my mouth / lips at any time in the future. Assuming no kind of sexual contact with another, including kissing or oral. 

(apologies if this has already been asked and answered somewhere)

[mr_hopp]

Hi @Yana234!

If you've never had an oral HSV-1 outbreak (98-99% of all oral herpes is HSV-1) and your only site of infection with the virus is genital, then it will tend to stay in that zone. However, transferring HSV-1 from your genitals to your mouth is possible if you touch a genital outbreak then touch your mouth (since there's so much virus being shed during an outbreak; much less during asymptomatic viral shedding, so autoinoculation doesn't tend to happen unless you have a full outbreak), so just wash your hands after touching an active outbreak to avoid autoinoculation. FYI, the longer you have herpes, the less likely autoinoculation is because your own antibodies will inhibit such spread to other parts of your body.

Other than autoinoculation, HSV-1 won't migrate on its own from genitals to mouth. Mainly because genital HSV lies dormant in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) at the base of the spine while oral HSV lies dormant in the trigeminal ganglia near the base of the skull. So whether it's HSV-1 or HSV-2, it doesn't move up or down, respectively, without our "help" via autoinoculation. 

Does that help? 

[Yana234]

Yes this is exactly what I needed to know. Thank you. 

[BigMistake]

The virus will not migrate on it's own.  But, learn from my mistake - do not touch your face, especially if you touch the area where you are having a genital outbreak.  In my case, I was trying to treat an area with jock itch.  I had creme all over my hands, and accidentally touched my face.  Three or four days later, I got feverish and had sores in my mouth.

 

If I had it to do over again, I would have worn nitrile gloves, and applied any meds or cremes with a cotton ball.  Once the cotton ball touched my skin, I would have thrown it away and got another for the next area.  I would not let a contaminated cotton ball touch the tip of the tube of meds and allow the tube to be potentially contaminated.   Or, I could have used a spray that would not require that area to be touched.

 

Once I had the outbreak in my mouth, I used a cotton swab to apply Abreva.  But, I always used a new swab when touching the tip of the Abreva tube to get the next dollop out of the tube..