Expert reveals why herpes still has no cure as Lamine Yamal’s girlfriend Ines Garcia gives diagnosis update
Here is the reason why you can never fully get rid of herpes once infected, after Lamine Yamal's girlfriend opened up about dealing with cold sores.
Yesterday, Ines Garcia, who met the Barcelona superstar on social media, revealed on Instagram that she'd woken up with a cold sore on her nose.
"It had been a long time since I’d had a herpes outbreak… Do you remember about a year ago," she captioned a selfie, in Spanish, on her Instagram story.
"I was getting at least one a month. Yesterday I woke up with one on my nose, and I’ve been looking like this 24 hours a day."
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For anyone who didn't know already, cold sores are a form of herpes, often caused by the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), which appear as fluid-filled blisters around the mouth.
According to the World Health Organisation, around 3.8 billion people under age 50 (64 percent) globally have HSV-1 infection.
HSV-1 is the main cause of oral (mouth) herpes, while herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) is the main cause of genital herpes.
Why the body cannot get rid of herpes
If you, or anyone you know, suffers from cold sores, you'll be more than aware that the infection never truly leaves the body. Here's why.
Explaining how herpes embeds itself in the body, Dr Mohammad Bakhtiar, Clinical Lead and Registered Manager at Medical Express Clinic, explained to LADbible that both strains of herpes, HSV-1 and HSV-2, travel through the body's sensory nerves and embed themselves in the nerve clusters 'near your spine or the base of your skull'.
At this point, the virus then goes into 'sleep mode', meaning that it is unable to be targeted by the antivirals which are used to treat flare-ups.
"While [the virus] sits dormant inside a nerve cell, it is not making new copies of itself, so the medication has nothing to lock onto," he explained.
"Tablets will clear up an outbreak on the skin, but they cannot get inside the nerve root to wipe out the latent virus... Your antibodies and T cells pass right by without noticing it is there."
This means that a latent infection of herpes will remain inside the body forever after transmission.
Dr Bakhtiar went on to explain that in order to completely eradicate the herpes virus from the body, your body would end up with 'permanent nerve damage'.
"Killing the cell to get rid of the virus would cause permanent nerve damage," he said. "Your body can easily replace infected cells in the lining of your nose after a cold, whereas sensory nerve cells have to last your whole life. The immune system holds back inside the nervous system to avoid damaging those nerves - herpes takes advantage of that."
Dr Bakhtiar added: "When you are run down, stressed, ill, or out in strong sun, a small amount of virus travels back down the same nerve to the skin, causes a flare, and still leaves the original copy behind in the nerve root."
When it comes to treating cold sores, Dr Bakhtiar explained that flare-ups typically get 'milder and less frequent' after a year, as the body gets better at ' keeping the virus in check'.
Topics: Football, Health, Celebrity, Social Media
Brenna Cooper
