Articles tagged with: cold sores
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Cold sores are a patch of tiny blisters that appear on your lips and occasionally in the nose. Another name for them is ‘fever blister‘ and the medical term is recurrent herpes labialis.
At first, you can tell something is going on because there is a bump on your lip that is sort of tingly. Soon the blisters popup and becomes really painful and annoying. A scab forms over the blisters soon after they appear.
Cold sores are extremely contagious and are caused by the HSV-1 virus. If you catch this virus then it can lay dormant in your body forever and occasionally become active.
Herpes Simplex Virus type 1 usually only becomes active showing itself above the waist. This is the type that causes 90% of the cold sores we see today. It is usually picked up as a child from either a parent or brother/sister. Herpes Simplex Virus type 2 affects the tissues below the waistline causing genital herpes. Strangely enough, it is also responsible for the remaining 10% of cold sores that appear around the mouth and nose.
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