Slept with a hooker and worried I have herpes

I had sex with an escort a couple of days back. Really don't want any judgement on this, I did it because I wanted to try it out. I didn't take advantage of any poor immigrants, this was a relatively high class escort (100 pounds + ) from a reputable company, so I assumed she'd be clean, regularly tested etc.

Went down on her and next day I suffer from dry, mildly chapped lips. It's not quite cold sores, but I'm worried its a sign or a symptom or something. I've used a chap stick on it for the last two days and the dryness has gotten better.

Keep in mind, I had just entered the UK after some time in a warm country, so it might just have been the weather.

What should I do now ? Should I have a blood test?

Reply 1

irisisis

Original post

by Anonymous

Herpes would be a very minor risk from performing oral sex.

Genital herpes is only infectious for a tiny fraction of the time without symptoms being present, you are talking less than 10% of the time, and actually isn't as easy to catch as you'd think. If you had unprotected sex with a girl who had genital herpes hsv-2 three times a week for a year, your risk of catching it over the entire year would still only be about 1 in 20 or 5%.

Herpes symptoms usually take 2-20 days to even begin to show, and the usual first symptoms would be swollen glands in your neck, flu-like symptoms and blistering on the lips. I have genital hsv-1, and showed no sign of any symptoms until 7 days after exposure.

Herpes blood tests exist, but only a few clinics in the UK do them - private clinics, generally as a package with other tests. They are not offered on the NHS, and anyway, because they test for antibodies to the virus, the earliest you can get tested is 6 weeks after exposure, preferably 3 months.

Herpes isn't really that much higher a risk with a prostitute than in the general population. Some estimates show that 60% of prostitutes in London carry hsv-2 (including street prostitutes), but then so do 25% of normal sexually active women. In the general population, 70% of women carry hsv-1, either orally or genitally, so it isn't that difficult to find yourself with a woman with one of the two viruses, both of which can cause genital or oral herpes.

The greatest risk for catching oral herpes is kissing - kissing anyone. Since over two thirds of adults have oral herpes, we expose ourselves all the time.

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

Thank you, any other advice?

Reply 3

unprinted

The rest of the what you've said I agree with, but..

Original post

by irisisis

Some estimates show that 60% of prostitutes in London carry hsv-2 (including street prostitutes), but then so do 25% of normal sexually active women.

.. what's the source for that?

Reply 4

unprinted

Original post

by Anonymous

Thank you, any other advice?

Well as you ask...

Don't talk about class in relation to escorts, doubly so if you're equating what they charge with it.

If you do this again, go for someone working independently. As well as the way that they get all of the money, rather than having someone else get a wodge for not doing very much, they have a bigger interest in having a good reputation.

Reply 5

irisisis

Original post

by unprinted

The rest of the what you've said I agree with, but..

.. what's the source for that?

A 2006 study.

Female sex workers in Europe have low levels of sexually transmitted infections, attributable to condom use. The aim of this paper is to describe the seroepidemiology of HSV-1 and HSV-2 in female sex workers in London by using a 15-year prospective study of 453 sex workers. The seroprevalence of HSV-1 was 74·4% [...]. The seroprevalence of HSV-2 was 60% and declined over time [...]. We show that a cohort of sex workers with extensive condom use and little known sexually transmitted infection have high levels of HSV-1 and HSV-2 infection, suggesting that condoms may not be universally protective.

However, 60% appears to be the average figure over a long-term study, and the percentage had gone down with time - it was 43.9% at the end of the study and 72% at the beginning.

Other variants include the age of the prostitute (58.9% of 16-20 year olds with hsv-2 compared to 69.1% of those over 30) and the time spent as a working girl (74% of girls who have been in the sex industry for 3 years had hsv-2 compared to 43.5% who had been in the industry 6 months or less). Interestingly, hsv-2 was more common among women born in the UK than girls from other developed countries.

See below:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870498/

Unfortunately, although condoms halve the risk of catching herpes, they do not eliminate it, and therefore prostitutes are at risk of catching both types of hsv at rates higher than the general female population/sexual health clinic attendees:

Compared with previous studies of unselected patients attending sexually transmitted disease clinics in the United Kingdom, these sex workers have rates of HSV-2 three times higher and a 1·2-fold increase in HSV-1

As in the general population, most sex workers with herpes do not know they have it or have not been diagnosed:

Of the 272 women with antibodies to HSV-2 at baseline, only 32 (11·8%) reported a history of genital herpes infection, suggesting that they were undiagnosed, asymptomatic or had latent infection.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 6

unprinted

Ah, thanks. I am familiar with their other work with that cohort, but I'd missed this one.

It's notable that the general population study that's being compared to is just over twenty years old. In that time, the sex worker cohort has changed hugely (see Helen Ward et al's Declining prevalence of STI in the London sex industry, 1985 to 2002, referenced in this one) so I am not sure that it's a safe assumption that the general population, especially in London, has not changed significantly.

I'd also say that..

The implications of this study are first that sex workers are at increased risk of acquiring herpes simplex infection despite sustained high levels of condom use. Even systematic use of condoms should be considered safer sex not safe sex. Sex workers need to be advised that condoms are not fully protective. Second, the overwhelming majority (88%) of HSV-2- positive women in this group did not have clinically apparent genital herpes; if these individuals are shedding the virus then their sexual partners are at risk of acquisition, including through oro-genital and protected vaginal or anal sex.