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Genital herpes commonly presents with genital sores which may have a painful or burning sensation.
Many individuals are not aware that they have genital herpes. Herpes may commonly be confused with an ingrown hair.
It is not really possible to know whether you acquired herpes from your current partner or from your previous partner. The reason being that primary genital herpes (first infection) can be asymptomatic and therefore can go unnoticed in about 50% of new infections.
Therefore, when genital herpes first manifests, that does not necessarily mean that it is a recently acquired infection. It might have been acquired earlier.
Herpes is acquired by close/intimate contact with infected skin or mucosa. The type of sexual contact can be either oral, vaginal or anal sex.
A condom does afford some protection against genital herpes but it is not 100% because a condom covers only the shaft of penis and therefore might leave a lot of infected area exposed during sex.
If herpes is not obvious clinically, a
blood test would be confirmatory. A blood test for herpes can be performed earliest at 2 weeks to detect the presence of
antibodies against the virus.
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