The authors of a new paper say that new treatments and vaccines are needed to reduce adverse health effects of the herpes virus and control its spread. The study updates the 2012 and 2016 WHO estimates. It was authored by experts from World Health Organization (WHO), Human Reproduction (HRP), the WHO Collaborating Centre for Disease Epidemiology Analytics on HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Viral Hepatitis at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and the University of Bristol.
Dr Katharine Looker, NIHR Research Fellow in Mathematical Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Bristol, and a senior author of the paper, added, "Our estimates show that millions of people globally experience pain from genital sores. Yet despite being a commonly-acquired infection, it hasn't received the attention it deserves to improve healthcare access and develop new treatment and vaccines."
Paper: ‘Estimated global and regional incidence and prevalence of herpes simplex virus infections and genital ulcer disease in 2020: Mathematical modeling analyses’ by Laith J Abu-Raddad, Katharine J Looker et al. in Sexually Transmitted Infections [open access]