Here’s another way herpes might mess up your sex life

It’s a well-known and contested rumor that oysters are an aphrodisiac, which means eating them might boost your sexual appetite.

If that’s true, then a strain of herpes has found another way to ruin your sex life — and humans can’t even catch it.

There’s a deadly herpes virus, Ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1), that’s already killed millions of Pacific oysters across the world, according to The Conversation.

And it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, Colleen Burge, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, wrote for The Conversation.

“It is almost certain to spread more widely in our globally connected world,” Burge wrote.

First discovered in 2008 in France, a microvariant of that herpes strain killed 80 to 100 percent of infected oyster beds in the European country, according to the New York Daily News. Two years later, an estimated 8 million oysters from England died in another outbreak, according to The Guardian.

And recently, a team of researchers that Burge was a part of found OsHV-1 in Tomales Bay, California.

The good news, Burge writes, is that the California version of the herpes “is thought to be less virulent (or deadly) than OsHV-1 microvariants.”

But the bad news, she continues, is that “it may only be a matter of time” until the strain spreads to other parts of the country.

And that could harm aquatic farmers in the United States, as the oyster industry brought in $136 million in 2012, according to a report from the Fisheries of the United States.

After reaching a bay, OsHV-1 often spreads during summer time, when the water is warm.

Burge compared the spread of herpes among oysters to how humans give each other cold sores.

“The situation is analogous to a human who is infected with herpes and periodically get cold sores,” she wrote. “Normally the virus is latent (present at a low level) and does not cause cold sores.

“But after a stressful situation, the virus replicates and cold sores emerge.”

There’s no easy solution for the problem, either.

So far, there is no vaccination for oyster herpes, according to the Daily News.

The best way to reduce the damage caused by the OsHV-1 strain is to stop it from spreading, Burge wrote.

But that’s not always possible, so the professor is working on another solution: examining two microvarients of OsHV-1 — one from France and another from California — to find “resistance genes” that can be used to breed herpes-resistant oysters.

“Beyond their cash value and the benefits that oysters provide by filtering water, oyster reefs provide food and habitat for many commercial fish species,” Burge wrote. “Oysters can’t move themselves out of harm’s way, nor can we move all susceptible oysters, so we need to protect them where they grow.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2017 at 3:16 PM with the headline "Here’s another way herpes might mess up your sex life."