Inapparent genital herpes simplex virus infection in college women.

During a six-month period, 600 gynecological samples were collected from 585 women with typical herpes lesions, women with non-herpes symptoms (ie, vaginitis, moniliasis, trichomoniasis, etc), and normal women seen at the student health center gynecological clinic and processed for herpes simplex virus (HSV) isolation. From these specimens, 29 samples from 25 of the 585 women (4.3%) were positive for HSV. When these isolates were typed using plaque diameter in chick cells, heat stability of viral thymidine kinase (T.K.), and restriction endonuclease patterns it was found that 18 samples (15 patients or 60%) were HSV-2 and 11 samples (10 patients or 40%) were HSV-1. Inapparent HSV infections constituted 20.0% of the virologically confirmed samples (5 of 25 patients) and represented 0.9% of the total patients studied (5 of 585). The inapparent infections were about equally divided between the two HSV types (2 were HSV-2 and 3 were HSV-1), and 4 of 5 occurred in the presence of clinically diagnosed monilia.