u/Classic_Guard_6483

I want them to stop expanding, whether through marriage or war. I want them to spend all their time upgrading their settlements and NOT marrying into their neighbors or declaring wars because I want to keep my dejure borders intact. Is this even possible because I can’t find any mod that does anything close

I don’t believe I’ve seen this posted here yet. This is a new vaccine approach by Yale where they are using a new nanoparticle referred to as BEACON or “Bioactive Enhanced Adjuvant Chemokine Oligonucleotide Nanoparticles” to basically pull the immune response to the genitals so they can establish local immunity in the genitals to possibly function as a preventative measure.

They seem to be using a standard gD vaccine (which has failed in the past on its own) in conjunction with BEACON.

They are saying it was a 40% success rate in mice with the vaccine by itself vs 80% with the vaccine and BEACON. They are still in preclinical research phase and are currently working to design a product like a suppository for BEACON.

My personal opinion:

I’m not really convinced with the vaccine approach, 80% still isn’t good enough IMO, but the most interesting part here is BEACON because it essentially is a drug delivery mechanism which is an essential component to solving the HSV puzzle.

There are numerous compounds that show effectiveness against the HSV virus in petridish conditions but the problem is getting them to the right location. I think this is a good step in that direction.

Thoughts/opinions? I hope everyone is having a good week, thanks for reading!

I just learned about this podcast, hosted by the Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy.

In the announcements for this podcast, he says, and I quote “This podcast is about telling the truth, however uncomfortable. I’m going to have fearless conversations with critical thinkers, independent doctors, respected scientists, and leaders in medical research and innovation.” He goes on to explain he wants to address the issues with the healthcare system in this podcast.

In my opinion this is the perfect, golden opportunity to advocate for HSV on a national stage. The HHS Secretary is in charge of the NIH and NIAID, he has the power to possibly pour millions of dollars into research.

Towards that end, we should try to get a virologist or HSV researcher to go on that podcast and talk to the secretary on the national stage, explaining this disease and its effects in depth and bringing the matter to the very gates of the White House itself. Personally I will be leaving comments on every video asking for this and I invite you to do the same. I also welcome any suggestions on how we can make this happen.

With all the recent advances in science, I genuinely believe we are on the cusp of finding a cure. We just need a strong push (investment) towards this goal and I believe we can have tangible results relatively soon.

Please don’t be discouraged and give in to despair, we can all make our voices heard. Let me know what everyone thinks.

Do you live with HSV? Do you care about better awareness, better research, and a future cure? Do you know how to write, edit images, make posts, explain science simply, organize information, or create content people will actually notice?

Then please consider using those skills.

HSV affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, yet it remains one of the most overlooked lifelong viral infections in public discussion. Too often, it is reduced to stigma, silence, jokes, or misinformation, while the people affected by it are left to deal with the physical, emotional, and social burden alone.

That will not change unless more of us start speaking.

We do not need one single page, one single leader, or one single campaign to carry this issue. We need many people, on many platforms, creating thoughtful and consistent content in their own way. Reddit posts, Instagram pages, TikToks, YouTube shorts, X threads, infographics, edited images, research summaries, captions, comments, personal reflections, educational posts — all of it matters.

Not everyone has to show their face. Not everyone has to share their name. Not everyone has to be an expert. Even if you can only help edit images, format posts, summarize studies, collect sources, write captions, or turn ideas into something readable and shareable, that is still valuable.

The goal is simple: make HSV harder to ignore.

We need more public conversation, more education, more compassion, more pressure for research, and more people pushing back against the idea that this virus should stay hidden in shame. A decentralized awareness effort means no single person has to carry the whole burden. Everyone can contribute a piece.

This is not about promoting one account or one organization. It is about encouraging everyone who cares about this issue to start creating, posting, sharing, and building awareness wherever they can.

If you are interested in helping or want to start creating HSV awareness content but do not know where to begin, comment below, we can exchange ideas, resources, and possible ways to help each other increase our reach and bring awareness and advocacy to everyone.

Let’s make HSV awareness visible, consistent, and impossible to dismiss. Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone, I hope everyone is having a good weekend

Many people are saying Fred Hutch/Dr. Keith Jerome has went defunct and is not providing updates anymore. However it appears that is not true, Caladan Therapeutics seems to be operating in stealth mode, and furthermore it appears Caladan Therapeutics is conducting a government funded study focusing on meganuclease-meditated gene editing.

I’m not sure if I completely understand the study so I’ll leave explaining what it exactly means to the experts here, but the study is set to end July 31st of this year, so we may be hearing some good news soon.

Link to the study: https://reporter.nih.gov/search/iReWOc7ZIUSH2\_wPfYegpw/project-details/11006727#description

It seems BioNTech, the company currently developing BNT-163, a trivalent mRNA vaccine for HSV, is in financial trouble. Its stock is reportedly down, they are slashing jobs, and their CEO and CMO apparently left the company.

Their trial for BNT-163 is in phase 1 and set to ends in October.

This does not bode well 😞 Hopefully they don’t discontinue their HSV program and continue to investigate this avenue, even if it’s not completely successful at least they’ll add to the corpus of knowledge about this disease

In other, slightly better news, and if I’m understanding this correctly, according to the following video from Herpes Cure Advocacy, the University of Pennsylvania is developing a very similar vaccine independent of BNT, so even if BNT discontinues this project, the UoP research is still ongoing.

Link to the video:

https://youtu.be/-vyTRF-8hKE?si=duZqB0Wbcc5gDyoW

This is a bit old (3 months ago) but I haven’t seen this posted here nor anyone talk about it yet. In fact I have seen multiple people saying FHC is not doing updates anymore. Initially I thought the same but upon further research I found this interview with Marius Wolf from FHC.

In this interview he discusses gene drive as a new avenue of research towards delivering CRISPR to the latent HSV. The basic idea is to use modified “gene drive” HSV virus, with the gene for anterograde transport taken out, to essentially vaccinate people. What this will do is recombine with the wild type HSV and eventually multiply more than the wild type essentially replacing it with the recombinant type, which is unable to do anterograde travel, AKA traveling back from the ganglion to the epithelial cells causing outbreaks and shedding.

It’s very interesting stuff but it remains in early clinical research. I just hope something triggers more impetus in these trials man

How does everyone feel about this avenue of research? I think the idea seems promising but then again, I find myself wondering if it’s promising why aren’t investors pouring millions of dollars into it? IM-250 showed promise and investors jumped on it immediately… I don’t know man.

Hi everyone, I am experiencing a weird set of symptoms after having unprotected sex with someone who is HSV2 positive. I already have OHSV1. Here is some background and the timeline for the events:

Background: 29M, contracted OHSV1 in June 2024, I was diagnosed via both IGG test and swab test, my IGG also came back negative for HSV2. Ever since then I’ve had 3 outbreaks outside of the lip including the primary infection, but very frequent, perhaps monthly, sores inside the mouth on the gums basically inside of the cheek. I have not been taking anything for these except topical over the counter things like lysine ointment and abreva. I only ever took one week long treatment of Valtrex during my initial OHSV1 outbreak.

March 29th: I had unprotected sex with a girl for several hours. It began for an hour of grinding and then we had penetrative vaginal sex twice for about 20 minutes each. I had disclosed to her about my OHSV1 before sex but she didn’t.

Afterwards she told me she has HSV2, and gave me two doses of 2 pills each of Valtrex. She said she contracted it recently (in September of last year) and is on daily Valtrex, but honestly considering her earlier deception I don’t know how true that is. The Valtrex pill bottle looked full and I couldn’t look at the date properly to confirm how long she’s had that bottle.

From this point forward, I started inspecting my penis several times daily, perhaps a bit roughly at times, sometimes twisting and stretching to get a better and closer look at any developing rashes or anything.

Around April 3rd: I started experiencing pain in the urethra and meatus without any visible lesions. The pain felt like a pinching sensation sort of or achiness or soreness. The pain persisted intermittently for the rest of the month ebbing and flowing. Sometimes I experienced a brief burning sensation in the glans too. No visible lesions occurred at all.

April 10th: I got tested at planned parenthood for everything except HSV, and everything came back negative. I was experiencing intermittent pain by this point in the urethra and meatus, but not while urinating at all. Still no lesions but some areas on the glans looked slightly reddish and had red spots but not clustered together and what appeared to be painful fissures. When I stopped stretching my glans these quickly subsided.

April 25th: I visited the hospital for another round of tests, including HSV2. The reason I visited the hospital was the urethral and meatus pain which was still there, even though it wasn’t severe enough to impede my daily life, it was still there all day and causing me immense stress and anxiety. I also experienced pain deep inside the medial side of the thigh, some of it was unbearable and made it hard to stand but lasted only for a few seconds, this pain was only for a short period.

I did a HSV IGG test, and two swab tests. The genital swab was on the corona of the penis on an area I was really suspicious of, NOT the urethra, and the oral swab was for an active lesion inside my mouth which confirmed it was indeed HSV1 inside my mouth and not canker sores. However the IGG test for both HSV1 and 2 as well as the genital swab came back negative. Everything else came back negative except for trace leukocytes esterase in the urinalysis which triggered a urine culture test that also came back negative.

I was prescribed Valtrex and other topical treatments for my mouth sore.

I refrained from taking the Valtrex for a while but on May 1st I started taking Valtrex and since then I’ve taken 3 doses, and the urethral pain began subsiding.

So in essence, my primary symptoms is urethral and meatus pain with no active lesion, no enlarged lymph nodes, no fever, just the urethral and meatus pain that persisted for about a month. I understand that isn’t a typical presentation of HSV2, however I am stumped at what else it could be since it seemingly responded to Valtrex. I have also considered CPPS since I have been undergoing extreme stress and anxiety due to this issue paired with the physical inspections, which may have contributed to the pain but now I am not sure.

Another question I have for the esteemed members of this group, does the frequent outbreaks of OHSV1 inside my mouth mean I am immunocompromised? Since I tested negative for the IGG test recently, does that mean my body is essentially not fighting it? (Assuming the test is accurate, I know it has a chance of being false).

Thank you for reading this and I’m looking forward to hear everone’s opinion. Sorry if this is a bit complicated or hard to digest but I’m willing to answer any questions.