Warts are an unsightly problem that affects 1 in 10 children. Medically called verruca vulgaris, warts are caused by papillomaviruses. Although children of any age get warts, the peak incidence is between ages 12 to 16 years.
If left untreated, the natural course of warts is for them to go away within 2 years. However, children and parents usually want something done now. There are many treatments for warts: cryotherapy (freezing them with liquid nitrogen); salicylic acid (a weak acid to dissolve them), cimetidine (an ulcer pill); canthardin (a drug that causes blistering under the wart so it falls off); podophyllin (a substance that causes the warts to fall off); cryosugery (a surgical technique that uses cold to remove the wart); carbon dioxide lasers (to vaporize the wart), imiquimod cream (for more on this, see volume 20, issue 4 of Pediatrics for Parents), heat (to burn the wart off), and tape occlusion (wrapping the wart tightly with tape that prevents moisture from contacting the wart). The way many of these treatments work isn't known. Some are expensive and time consuming.
Most doctors use cryotherapy to treat children's warts. The warts are frozen with liquid nitrogen for 10 to 20 seconds every 2 to 3 weeks. If the time between treatments is increased to 3 to 4 weeks, the success rate falls from 75% to 40%. It may take many treatments for the wart to go away.
It's not known exactly how freezing destroys warts. It's believed that the local irritation from the freezing increases the body's immune reaction against the wart. The treatment can be painful. Other potential side effects include infections, blistering, and skin color changes.
To determine if taping works as well as cryotherapy, doctors at the Madigan Army Medical Center treated 25 children with warts with standard cryotherapy and 26 with taping. Taping requires covering the wart continuously for 6 1/2 days, then removing the tape for 12 hours. The treatment cycle was continued until the wart is totally gone.
The warts treated in this study were on the children's fingers, backs of the heels, bottoms of the feet, and palms. The tape they selected was duct tape. It's cheap, easily available, and sticks well. The only side effect from the tape was mild local skin irritation.
The success rate of taping was equal to cryotherapy. The parents and children liked it a lot better than cryotherapy because it's fairly painless, much cheaper, and can be done safely at home. Doctors are not sure why the taping works. They hypothesized that the tape works like cryotherapy--causing irritation that stimulates the immune system.
This low tech approach to treating warts is as effective as cryotherapy, much cheaper, and easier to do. Taping can be done by parents and, if successful, eliminates the need to see the doctor.
Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 10/02.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Pediatrics for Parents, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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