Question about a common statistic re: herpes

[shinebrighter]

Hi!

I love this site- thank you so much to everyone who makes it a welcoming and safe place.

I've seen the statistic here and other places, that 80% of the people who have herpes don't know that they have it. How does this statistic exist? Do doctors not tell patients when they have it, or something? There must be some obvious explanation that I'm missing-- would love your thoughts! The statistic is definitely a useful one to share when having the disclosure discussion, but I just want to make sure I'm understanding it.

Thanks. : )

[2Legit2Quit]

There's aot if factor's that go into it and just like every statistic is an estimate, this is no different. I know that testing if the sacral ganglia in cadavers found 40% of them were hs. 2 positive, yet only like 12 patients or even less, had any clinical recognition or prior diagnosis of having H. So they'll use this, the reported cases, the numbers of ones who test positive in blood, but have no symptoms, etc and do an analysis. I'm horrible at statistics, so I can't explain better than that really. Googling it may provide some insight.

[chikitta13]

The statistic comes from the National health and nutrition examination survey. Every year they survey a representative sample of Americans on a variety of health issues. The questions include asking about hsv diagnosis. They also take blood samples from people and compare the self reported responses to the blood samples. 80% of the prior who test positive for hsv answered no to that survey question.

[shinebrighter]

So interesting- thanks for explaining! And then they don't share with people that they actually do carry HSV?

[chikitta13]

What they do from there is anybody's guess. I don't think they follow up with participants regarding that. I imagine they like most people - some do, some don't. Hopefully more do.

[WCSDancer2010]

So interesting- thanks for explaining! And then they don't share with people that they actually do carry HSV?

 

The reason 80% don't know they are HSV positive is that Herpes is not in the standard STD panel ... and 80% of people with H don't have symptoms... so they just don't know. If they are tested (even in a research panel) they would be told .... the thing is, most people *think* that herpes is in the STD panel ... so they would answer that they are H- ...