There is a way to test for shedding, but ....

it's rather expensive and involves swabbing the ano-genital area daily for PCR DNA analysis. The Westover Heights Clinic in Portland, Ore. Offers this service nationwide.
http://www.westoverheights.com/
BTW, they have an excellent free "Herpes Handbook" available on this site for download.

There is a recently concluded study that has not been published yet that involves testing like this with a group of test subjects who have documented cases of herpes for over 10 years. They swabbed daily for two months. Preliminary rough results indicate detectable shedding on about 19% of the days. I hasten to add, though, that this does not indicate that the subjects are contagious that much of the time, since the test is so sensitive that the amount of virus present does not have to be sufficient for transmission to be detectable.

I'm wanting a "Tri-corder" sort of instrument that you just wave over your private parts and it beeps if there's shedding. :-) Tweet