What Are The Benefits Of Vitamin E Oil For Herpes?

Herpes is a viral infection that produces painful blisters and superficial open sores on the mouth or the genitals, depending on where the virus enters the body. There is no cure for herpes, so an infected person has the disease for life, although not all infected people experience symptoms, according to University of Washington professor of infectious diseases, Lawrence Corey, M.D., in the 2008 edition of "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine." For those who do, applying vitamin E oil may reduce pain and accelerate healing.

Benefits

As of October 2010, the National Library of Medicine lists three reports on the therapeutic use of topical vitamin E oil for herpes. All three involved a small number of patients and none of them included a control group of untreated patients to provide a comparison, so their results can only be described as preliminary. However, they were consistent. All three studies concluded that the topical vitamin E oil produced pain relief. Some patients experienced relief within 15 minutes while others reported that it took up to eight hours. All of the patients reported that the pain relief was sustained, unlike over-the-counter medications that typically offer pain relief only until the medication wears off. All of the studies also concluded that vitamin E oil accelerated healing, although they provided no data to support this claim.

Sources

MedlinePlus, a patient information service jointly maintained by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, says that Vitamin E occurs naturally in foods such as wheat germ, corn, nuts, seeds, olives, green leafy vegetables, asparagus and vegetable oils. The studies on vitamin E oil for herpes describe vitamin E in terms of a purified dietary supplement. Patients can purchase vitamin E oil as individual softgels primarily intended for oral use, or in bottles intended solely for topical use. The softgels can be punctured and the contents applied to skin lesions. Either way, patients who plan to use vitamin E oil for herpes should choose supplements that contain vitamin E as tocopherol, rather than tocopheryl since the latter is relatively inactive in skin. UMHS also recommends natural rather than synthetic vitamin E since the former is more powerful. The two types can be distinguished by their prefixes. Natural vitamin E is usually prefixed with a "d" while synthetic vitamin E is prefixed with "dl."

Considerations

UMHS says that, "Vitamin E toxicity is very rare and supplements are widely considered to be safe." UMHS cautions that long term use of high doses of oral vitamin E supplements have been associated with severe respiratory infections in the elderly, impaired glucose control in people with diabetes, increased risk of heart failure in people with pre-existing diabetes or heart disease and increased risk of death from a variety of causes. However, these results probably do not apply to people who use topical vitamin E as a treatment for herpes. Vitamin E oil does not replace conventional medical treatment for herpes or any other condition. Although herpes symptoms usually subside without treatment, people who experience severe, frequent or prolonged---longer than two weeks--outbreaks should see a doctor.