How Do Doctors Treat HSV?

Medical doctors often treat herpes with antiviral drugs and steroids. While antiviral prescription drugs should be reserved for acute infections, they are available and prescribed by medical doctors to just about anyone who wants to try them. Antiviral prescription drugs are believed to lower the ability of the virus to multiply in your body, thereby reducing your symptoms, but there can be terrible side effects. 

Depending on the location and severity of an outbreak, an antiviral medication may be the only way to stop the progression of the herpes virus in some instances. However, any anti-infective chemical can increase the occurrence of resistant organisms, which means prescription drugs can exacerbate HSV outbreaks by causing the virus to reappear sporadically throughout the body, a condition known as Disseminated Herpes, a viral complication. Topical steroids can increase the activity of the herpes virus. They DO NOT cure HSV and DO NOT work for everyone to halt an outbreak. Furthermore, most medicines only work if taken at the first outbreak you've ever had.

Sometimes, doctors suggest taking a low-dose prescription antiviral, such as Acyclovir, to help prevent infections. Here's why. When herpes activates, Acyclovir acts against the virus by entering the herpes DNA as it begins to replicate, which prevents lesions from forming, which is good news. At least, that's the idea. However, the drug can no longer enter the viral DNA when the virus goes dormant (back into hiding). Herpes is still there, slumbering away in your nerves. 

The bad news? Antiviral drugs can cause herpes to mutate into superbugs that are resistant to antiviral drugs. It's said these new superbugs are less virulent than the original herpes. But less virulent doesn't equate to fewer outbreaks, and here's the danger. Your new "brand" of herpes will resist all previously taken antiviral drugs. Why? Because herpes encodes the next generation to do so. 

See my HSV Remedy Review: Prescription Antiviral Medications for information regarding Acyclovir and other antiviral prescription medications.