The issue of herpes incubation is often brought up as a means of determining whether a genital herpes infection has taken place. People concerned about being exposed to genital herpes will often reason that the symptoms of genital herpes will show up within a certain time frame, and a lack of symptoms within that time frame will mean there's no infection. This kind of thinking is reasonable, but it's not reliably accurate because genital herpes doesn't uniformly present symptoms. In some cases, the symptoms of genital herpes will show up several days after a genital herpes infection has taken place. In other cases, people notice symptoms of genital herpes literally years after a genital herpes infection likely took place. And in many cases, a genital herpes infection never presents obvious symptoms at all. Roughly eighty percent of people with genital herpes don't realize they're infected, and at least part of the reason for this is likely because obvious symptoms never appear. There is a uniform incubation period for the appearance of genital herpes antibodies after a genital herpes infection takes place, which is ten weeks. This is necessary information if one wants to conduct a blood test to determine the presence of genital herpes. However, waiting to see if genital herpes symptoms appear is not a reliable method for determining whether one has genital herpes or not.