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Letters |15 April 1998

Aspirin in the Management of Recurrent Herpes Simplex Virus Infection

Istvan Karadi, MD, PhD; Sarolta Karpati, DSc; Laszlo Romics, DSc

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  • Semmelweis Medical University; Budapest, Hungary
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TO THE EDITOR:
Recurrent facial-oral or genital herpes simplex virus (HSV-1 and HSV-2) infections affect 28% and 1.1% of the population of college students in the United States, respectively [1]. The painful symptoms can disturb usual activities, and complete recovery often takes 8 to 9 days.
A 45-year-old man with severe recurrent herpes labialis had a myocardial infarction and began receiving aspirin, 125 mg/d. After 3 months, the patient reported complete disappearance of the herpetic episodes. Aspirin was his only new medication.
To explore the effect of aspirin, we recruited 21 volunteers with recurrent HSV infection (mean age ±SD, 29 ± 10 years; 14 were women and 7 were men); 19 had herpes labialis, and 2 had herpes genitalis. Patients immediately began receiving 125 mg of aspirin daily at the first evidence of symptomatic HSV recurrence. Nine of these volunteers continued to take aspirin for several months. We also observed 21 sex- and age-matched persons with recurrent HSV infection who had not taken any anti-inflammatory or antiviral drugs. The aspirin-treated patients had significantly fewer days of active HSV infections than did the controls (4.71 ± 0.95 days compared with 8.09 ± 0.99 days; P < 0.001). All aspirin recipients reported milder skin involvement than they had experienced previously. Patients receiving long-term aspirin therapy had longer symptom-free periods.
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Karadi I, Karpati S, Romics L. Aspirin in the Management of Recurrent Herpes Simplex Virus Infection. Ann Intern Med. ;128:696–697. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-128-8-199804150-00027

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Published: Ann Intern Med. 1998;128(8):696-697.

DOI: 10.7326/0003-4819-128-8-199804150-00027

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