Medical researchers are closer to understanding why some people are more prone to cold sores than others. Although between 80 and 90 percent of the population carry the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), only a fraction of people—around 20 percent—regularly get cold sores.
“Most people carry the cold sore strain of the herpes simplex virus, but until now we never knew why only some of them develop cold sores,” said Professor Juergen Haas of the University of Edinburgh, lead author of the study, in a news release.
Read the full, original story here: The reason some people get cold sores may be genetic