I am wondering, would it make sense to get blood sample taken during vertigo episode? I could arrange a blood lab technician to come and take my blood if attack happens, but what should the sample be checked for? I am all for viral theory, so the leucocyte formula should show that there is a viral infection. Am I right here? As a comparison, should blood work done for someone with cold sores also show there is a viral infection? I am aware that there is no sense to check against a specific virus, since there are many candidates within herpes family; it would only be a blind guess...
There is a blood test for HSV, my doctor ordered one for me and ofc I was positive and then she agreed to prescribe antivirals for me for Meniere's.
Yes Vicki, it goes without saying that almost everyone has HSV antibodies. But it does not have to be HSV as a cause for MM as I understand, and there are different tests for different strains of viruses from Herpes family. If one is negative to HSV the one may be actually positive to Epstein-Barr or some Herpes virus there is no available test for. Do you remember what antibodies you had then? One tells "there was a HSV infection in the past", the other one "There has recently been a HSV infection". One is called IgG, the other IgM. I know the leucocyte formula can tell in general whether there is viral or bacterial infection going on. Should we expect to have the formula saying "yes, there is active viral infection at the moment" on our bad days? Anybody tried this?
there are 8 human HSV and I believe most if not all can be tested with a blood test. I don't recall but if I find my blood work I will let you know
I found my results looks like she did both IGG and IGM, this is 2 of the results: HSV 1 IGG HERPESELECT SPEC AB >5.00 H normal range is 0-0.89 INDEX INTERPRETATION: POSITIVE mine is more than 5, seems pretty high to me. HSV 1 IGM SCREEN NEGATIVE
Thank you Vicki for sharing these. I researched a bit, and what I understood is: If there are only IgG antibodies you have been infected in the past, but most likely you are not infected at the moment. But, if there is high IgG and low IgM, the test may have given false negative result. Go figure...
This is what I found about it IgG is recommended not IgM and here is why IgM tests are not recommended because of three serious problems: Many assume that if a test discovers IgM, they have recently acquired herpes. However, research shows that IgM can reappear in blood tests in up to a third of people during recurrences, while it will be negative in up to half of persons who recently acquired herpes but have culture-document first episodes. Therefore, IgM tests can lead to deceptive test results, as well as false assumptions about how and when a person actually acquired HSV. For this reason, we do not recommend using blood tests as a way to determine how long a person has had herpes. Unfortunately, most people who are diagnosed will not be able to determine how long they have had the infection. In addition, IgM tests cannot accurately distinguish between HSV-1 and HSV-2 antibodies, and thus very easily provide a false positive result for HSV-2. This is important in that most of the adult population in the U.S. already has antibodies to HSV-1, the primary cause of oral herpes. A person who only has HSV-1 may receive a false positive for HSV-2. IgM tests sometimes cross-react with other viruses in the same family, such as varicella zoster virus (VZV) which causes chickenpox or cytomegalovirus (CMV) which causes mono, meaning that positive results may be misleading. The accurate herpes blood tests detect IgG antibodies. Unlike IgM, IgG antibodies can be accurately broken down to either HSV-1 or HSV-2. A recent study corroborates this finding: labs that used non-gG-based tests for herpes had high false-positive rates for HSV-2 antibodies (14-88% saying the blood sample was positive for HSV-2) in samples that were actually only positive for HSV-1 antibodies. But 100% of the labs using gG-based tests accurately reported that the blood sample was negative for HSV-2.