How Do I Get Tested For Herpes?

Your healthcare provider will look at the sores and see if they seem typical of a herpes outbreak. If they are, your provider may swab the sores to see if they contain virus. However, this swab test is not always accurate and has a high risk of false negatives. An outbreak that looks like herpes, but that comes back with a negative test for virus, may still be a herpes infection. Testing a swab for virus is most useful in the first 48 hours of a first outbreak. After that, and during recurrent outbreaks, it becomes much less accurate.

Herpes outbreaks usually appear as one or more blisters that then break open to become sores.

Although there are commercial blood tests for herpes that looks for antibodies against HSV1 and HSV2, they do not always give conclusive results. There are type-specific blood tests that are more accurate, but these may be more difficult to find. An excellent overview of Herpes testing, that links to a review of current blood tests, can be found here