Treatments for Genital Herpes

 Treatments for Genital Herpes

Therapy with antiviral drugs will help people who are bothered by vaginal herpes treatment outbreaks stay symptom-free longer. These drugs may also reduce the severity and life long symptoms when they do surface. Drug therapy is not a remedy, but it can make living with the problem easier.

There are three main drugs commonly used to treat vaginal herpes symptoms: acyclovir (Zovirax), famciclovir (Famvir), and valacyclovir (Valtrex). These are all consumed in pill form. Severe instances may be treated with the 4 (IV) drug acyclovir.

Recipes applied to the surface of the skin offer little benefit, and physicians don't usually recommend all of them.

When Treatments for Vaginal Herpes Are Given

http://preventionherpestreatment.com Initial therapy. If you have symptoms such as sores when you're first diagnosed with vaginal herpes, your doctor will usually provide you with a brief course (seven in order to 10 days) of antiviral therapy to relieve them or even prevent them from obtaining worse. Your doctor may keep on the drugs longer when the sores don't heal during that time period.

After the first treatment, use your doctor to come up with the best way to get antiviral therapies. There are 2 options:

Intermittent treatment. Your physician may prescribe an antiviral drug for you to keep on submit case you have another flare-up; this is called intermittent treatment. You can take the pills for two in order to five days as soon as you notice sores or when you feel a good outbreak coming on. Sores will certainly heal and disappear by themselves, but taking the drugs could make the symptoms less severe and create them go away faster.
Suppressive treatment. If you have outbreaks frequently , you may want to consider taking a good antiviral drug every day. Physicians call this suppressive treatment. For someone who has more than 6 outbreaks a year, suppressive treatment can reduce the number of outbreaks through 70% to 80%. Lots of people who take the antiviral medicines daily have no outbreaks whatsoever.

There is no set number of breakouts per year that doctors use for decide when someone ought to start suppressive therapy. Instead, more important factors are when the outbreaks happen and when they are severe enough in order to interfere with your life.


Taking every day suppressive therapy may also slow up the risk of transmitting the virus to some sex partner. Antiviral medicines reduce viral shedding, once the virus makes new duplicates of itself on the skin's surface.

A recent study of individuals taking daily doses associated with valacyclovir shows the drug might help protect sex partners through being infected, although you need to still use a latex condom. Half the partners of individuals taking daily valacyclovir grew to become infected with the virus, as well as half did not. Moreover, 74% of the partners did not display any symptoms of genital the herpes virus, even if they had acquired the herpes virus.

Side Effects and Follow-up Take care of Genital Herpes

Side effects using these herpes drugs are considered moderate, and health experts believe these types of drugs are safe in the long term. Acyclovir is the oldest of the 3, and its safety has been recorded in people taking suppressive treatment for several years.

People taking suppressive therapy should see their own doctor at least once a year to determine if they should continue. You might find taking the pills every day to become inconvenient, the drugs might not work for you, or you may normally have fewer outbreaks in the future. Your doctor can help you make therapy choices to suit your needs.