# Cold sore transmission: carrier to carrier?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-sore-transmission-carrier-to-carrier/206475>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 9, 2003, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-sore-transmission-carrier-to-carrier/206475 "2003-10-09T13:44:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RavingMad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/edb3f5/32.png) [@RavingMad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RavingMad)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2003, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-sore-transmission-carrier-to-carrier/206475/1 "2003-10-09T13:44:01Z")

</div>

Person A has herpes simplex virus and has an active cold sore/fever blister. Person B also has herpes (as does 80% of America, by some estimates) but no active outbreaks at the moment, nor has B had any for several years.

A and B kiss, and B develops a cold sore/fever blister soon thereafter. It would seem to me that as a herpes carrier already, B wouldn’t be susceptible to an outbreak from contact with another herpes carrier.

Question: As B already _has_ herpes, is the cold sore development a result of the kiss with another herpes carrier? Or is it just coincidence, or perhaps even psychosomatically induced? Are there maybe different strains of the herpes virus that B just wasn’t used to, hence the outbreak?

Thanks, all.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2003, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-sore-transmission-carrier-to-carrier/206475/2 "2003-10-09T15:42:18Z")

</div>

I’m not a MD, so take this answer with a grain of salt. 🙂 The herpes virus (when dormant) resides in a ganglia ( the cervical ganglia, I believe). It does not cause any symptoms until it escapes from the ganglia, usually caused by stress. If the virus is implanted on one’s lips (by reason of a kiss, for example), the virus is now in the bloodstream and can cause symptoms.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-sore-transmission-carrier-to-carrier/206475/3 "2003-10-10T01:53:29Z")

</div>

Note that there are substrains of Herpes so in principle one can get infected by more than one substrain. But I don’t know how likely this actually is.

Induced by stress not doubt has a much higher probability going for it.