TheOneInFour

I was talking to my doc today and found out that it is apparently possible to get type-specific blood tests in Canada. The bad news however is that, at least in Ontario where I am, they're not covered under the socialised health insurance. I didn't even think it was possible to get the type-specific blood tests here without dealing directly with the US companies that made the test kits, so that's better than I'd thought!

The IgM test (measures antibodies in the blood but not type-specific) *is* available here and I think is covered. But type-specific tests like the Western Blot have to be paid for out of pocket. Sorry, I didn't get any info about how much WB is, and it probably varies from place to place anyway, but it's probably expensive. Someone posted here a long time ago they thought it was about $150. My doc said they get the WB tests processed in Montreal. Again I'm surprised -- I would have thought Vancouver, since that's where Viridae is, Dr. Stephen Sacks' lab that does processing.

One encouraging thing my doc did say about the IgM test is that it will show the number of antibodies at the time the test is taken. Based on these results it's possible to form an educated guess as to whether an active lesion is in fact herpes. In other words, if the person is showing visible symptoms and their antibody count is high, it's a good guess that the lesion is a herpes OB. If the antibody count is low or absent then it's probably not.

This can be helpful especially if a swab test shows as negative, since there's another test suggesting there's herpes activity going on. So the IgM test won't tell you the HSV type or where the herpes is located, but can apparently be combined with visible symptoms to give an educated guess. (I hope that makes sense.)

So I think that's relatively good news!

TheOneInFour