Australian Herpes Management Forum

News: Australian Herpes Statistics Published

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According to research published this month, 12 per cent of Australian adults are infected with HSV-2, and 76 per cent are infected with HSV-1.

AHMF Board members Prof Anthony Cunningham and Prof Adrian Mindel are contributing authors in the landmark study which for the first time provides a picture of genital herpes across the Australian population. Previous studies have focused on smaller groups such as woman attending antenatal clinics or patients of sexual health clinics. This study examined blood specimens from thousands of Australians in many cities and rural centres.

Points of interest:

• Australian women are twice as likely to carry the HSV-2 virus compared with men
• People in rural areas are less likely to carry HSV-2
• Indigenous people are more likely to carry HSV-2

The research has been published in the March 2006 issue of the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. The full text of the paper is available free of charge by following the link below:

Prevalence of infection with herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2 in Australia: a nationwide population based survey
by Anthony Cunningham, R Taylor, J Taylor, C Marks3 J Shaw and Adrian Mindel
published in Sexually Transmitted Infections online, March 2006: http://sti.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/82/2/164?ijkey=.ovGwit1S9WJQ&keytype=ref&siteid=bmjjournals

3 April 2006