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Many people want to know the likelihood of getting herpes from a partner who is infected with genital herpes. For a couple who abstain from sex during an outbreak but have sex without a condom between outbreaks, the average risk is 10 percent for the uninfected person to acquire herpes from the infected partner over the course of a year.

90 people out of 100 will remain uninfected.

As noted earlier, women have a higher risk of becoming infected. An uninfected man having sex with an infected female partner in the above scenario has about a 4 percent risk of getting genital herpes

In other words, 10 people out of 100 in such a relationship will, after a year, have contracted herpes from their partners via asymptomatic shedding, but after a year, whereas a woman having unprotected sex with an infected male partner has about a 10 percent chance of getting herpes after a year if she already has type 1 herpes orally, but about a 32 percent risk of getting herpes after a year if she is completely negative for herpes. These statistics are derived from studies of discordant couples (one person has herpes and the other doesn’t) over a specified period of time. Whether these statistics hold for every year a couple has been together, or whether they change with time, is not yet known. Usually the longer a person has herpes, the less active that person’s virus becomes, so for any specific couple these numbers may decrease over time. Studies are under way to evaluate further the risk of infection.

Statistics for men who have sex with other men or women who have sex with other women are not yet available. For a woman having unprotected sex with a female partner, the risk is probably lower overall, although transmission may still take place through genital rubbing and through oral sex.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.