Treatment options

Once a test has confirmed that you have genital herpes, your doctor can prescribe antiviral medicine to control the symptoms.

Antiviral tablets can be taken in two ways: each time symptoms begin to appear to minimise their impact (known as Episodic therapy), or continuously to prevent the symptoms occurring (known as Suppressive therapy).

Antiviral therapy has been around for a long time, and most people find it very helpful for clearing up symptoms or preventing them coming back. It doesn’t work equally well for everyone, though, and it only works while you go on taking it.

Episodic therapy

Taking an antiviral to treat symptoms as they happen is called episodic therapy.

The aim of taking the drug this way is to shorten the length of each outbreak and make the symptoms less severe while they last.

You may have seen advertising recommending that medication for cold sores be taken before the sores actually break out. The same principle applies to episodic therapy for genital herpes: it works particularly well if you feel tingling before the symptoms actually appear, and you are able to start taking the tablets then.

Your doctor will usually prescribe the tablets in advance, so you already have them when you need to start taking them.

Suppressive therapy

If antiviral tablets are taken daily, they can help stop symptoms from coming back. Using them to suppress outbreaks this way is called suppressive therapy.

Even if symptoms do appear while you are taking daily medication, they will probably be much less troublesome than they otherwise would be.

As well as preventing most outbreaks from occurring, suppressive therapy has been shown to lessen the chances of passing the virus on – as long as safer sex practices like wearing condoms are also used.

Suppressive therapy can be very helpful in short-term stressful situations. For potentially stressful periods like sitting exams, moving house or getting married, that could trigger an outbreak, suppressive therapy is a good option to protect yourself. The last thing you need or want is a herpes attack causing you grief when you can least deal with it.

The antiviral drug prevents the herpes virus multiplying in your body, so it also cuts down the amount of viral shedding. Less virus on the skin surface means less chance of fresh infection.