Natural Herpes Treatment

People who have herpes but don’t know it can still be passing along the infection - or “shedding” it, Reuters news service reports. One in six adults in the U.S. has genital herpes, making screening for the disease very important. Genital herpes not only causes painful blisters but it can increase your risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

“The people who are symptomatic are really the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Christine Johnston, of the University of Washington in Seattle. “We are not having any impact on the epidemic by ignoring it.”

In Johnson’s study, researchers followed 498 people who had antibodies in their blood against genital herpes. This shows they had all been infected, even though about one in six never had any symptoms. Although it is unclear how much virus is needed to infect someone else, Johnston said, the amount of virus shed in the absence of sores was the same for people even without symptoms. Doctors recommend frank conversations with your partner about herpes.

A “magic” herb, Carissa Edulis,  that drew thousands of people  to a remote Loliondo village in Tanzania was identified by Kenyan scientists a few years ago as a cure for a drug-resistant strain of a sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhoea. This herb also is believed to cure many other diseases besides gonorrhoea.  The Kamba refer to as mukawa or mutote and use it for chest pains, while the Nandi boil the leaves and bark to treat breast cancer, headache and chest pains.

Researchers discovered the plant could be used for the treatment of the  herpes virus. Led by Dr Festus M Tolo of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), the team from the University of Nairobi and the National Museums of Kenya found the herb could provide an alternative remedy for herpes infections. 

“An extract preparation from the roots of Carissa edulis, a medicinal plant locally growing in Kenya, has exhibited remarkable anti-herpes virus activity for both wild type and drug resistant strains,” they reported in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.

The Pepsi company could help a  professor find a  herpes cure.

Professor David C. Bloom in the department of molecular genetics and microbiology, is hoping to win  a $50,000 grant to fund a treatment for herpes  in the Pepsi Refresh Project .

Bloom and his  team invented a new ribozyme therapy that could be used to treat herpes infections resistant to conventional drug treatments. Ribozyme, a molecule in genetic material, is intended to make the virus unable to infect and be transmitted to others.

About a million new cases of herpes occur annually. If Bloom succeeds, he would be able to stop the recurrence of herpes and fund human clinical trials for the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1).

“Our project is at a critical phase right now,” Bloom said. “We have exciting data that shows our therapy can block the HSV infection in vivo, but we need additional data on the ability of this treatment to block recurrent disease.”

Starpharma is in beginning to consider clinical trials of its VivaGel product in women at risk of contracting genital herpes, the  Chief Executive Officer Jackie Fairley said in an interview in Singapore. The Melbourne-based company licensed its VivaGel- coated condoms in 2008 to SSL International Plc, maker of the world’s best-selling Durex brand.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that no cure exists for genital herpes, a condition that infects about one in six Americans and produces painful sores and increases HIV transmission. Other gels are being developed to prevent HIV infections, VivaGel is the only microbicide designed to stop herpes from spreading, Fairley said.

Today, if you have herpes, a natural product called Dynamiclear is very effective in controlling herpes outbreaks because it kills herpes viral particles when applied to  open herpes lesions. Fewer herpes particles remain and this means fewer and weaker outbreaks.