Can You Kill Warts With Duct Tape?
Analysis by
Dr. Joseph Mercola
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Common warts are benign skin growths triggered by an infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), affecting up to 20% of the population. Most notably the prevalence is higher in children than adults
- After exposure, it can take up to six months for a wart to develop and most disappear without treatment. However, data show that if you want to remove warts, duct tape is an effective, inexpensive and painless method that does not leave scar tissue
- Two studies demonstrated duct tape removed 80% to 85% of the participant's warts as compared to 60% of those who received cryotherapy
- Other conventional removal methods include prescription strength acid, minor surgery and laser treatment, each of which is painful and typically leaves a scar. Other at-home treatments that are not painful and don't leave a scar include garlic, banana peel, pineapple juice and aloe vera
There are several different types of warts, but most are benign skin growths that affect up to 20% of the population.1 Although they're common, the prevalence in school children is higher than in adults and they are more common in immunosuppressed patients and those who handle meat.
While they can occur at any age, they're rare during infancy and the prevalence peaks in school age children at roughly 16 years. Traditional medicine practitioners and Western medicine doctors have looked at several ways of eliminating this skin growth from their patients. It turns out that you may have the best chance of success treating skin warts at home with duct tape. [..]
Does Duct Tape Kill Warts?
There are case studies and credible examples of home remedies that can help remove the common wart. But as Dr. Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org, notes, many things can be attributed to curing warts because most go away on their own.4
He notes one study that followed 1,000 children for two years during which the researchers found that two-thirds of the warts disappeared without any treatment, suggesting that the best treatment may be to leave them alone unless treatment is warranted.
It is assumed that spontaneous healing is associated with an immune response in the body. This is based on studies where a wart was injected with a vaccine or a placebo. In this study, Greger notes that the vaccine appeared to accelerate the immune process and cleared the wart. The problem is that injections hurt and 30% of the children who had their warts injected with the vaccine developed a flu-like syndrome.5
Multiple studies have demonstrated that a placebo effect on warts can cure approximately one-quarter of the cases and traditional medical therapies can resolve approximately 50% of the warts. For duct tape to be considered efficacious, it would have to cure at least as many as conventional treatments.
One group of researchers6 tested duct tape against cryotherapy to treat common warts in 51 children and young adults ages 3 to 22 years. The participants were randomized and 26 were treated with duct tape and 25 with liquid nitrogen for 10 seconds every 2 to 3 weeks for a maximum of six treatments. The data revealed that 85% of the participants using duct tape were cured while 60% of the participants using cryotherapy had complete resolution.
In other words, the duct tape worked far better than the current medical treatment. As Gregor notes,7 the researchers observed the only adverse effect from the duct tape was a minimal amount of local irritation. Yet cryotherapy is painful, causes bloody blisters that can get infected and one young child vomited before each cryotherapy session in fear of the pain.
What’s the Best Type of Duct Tape for Wart Removal
Further studies tried to replicate the results. A 2007 paper8 analyzed the cost-effectiveness of several treatments for warts and found that duct tape was the most cost-effective but “published evidence of its effectiveness is sparse. Duct tape could be adopted as the primary treatment for cutaneous warts if its effectiveness is verified by further rigorous trials.”9
Greger discussed10 the results of a second 2007 study11 that looked at the treatment of common warts in adults using duct tape in a double-blind, randomized controlled trial. In this study, the researchers engaged 90 immunocompetent adults who had at least one wart and randomized them to either be treated with moleskin with transparent duct tape or moleskin alone.
They found no statistically significant differences in the two groups for the treatment of warts in the adult population. To determine whether the difference was the age of the participants, Greger describes another study in which 100 school children were randomized to receive treatment with duct tape or a corn pad. In this study the researchers did the same thing, applying clear duct tape, and they got the same results — the duct tape failed.
At that point, the question of whether duct tape could help treat the common wart was dropped as ineffective since follow-up studies had demonstrated different results than the original study using a larger number of participants.
However, since duct tape appeared to be working clinically, could the difference be in the type of duct tape that was used and not in the age difference of the participants? Greger quotes from a 2011 paper12 published in the British Journal of Dermatology titled “Clear Duct Tape is Not Duct Tape,” in which the author postulated:
“[C]lear duct tape and moleskin both contain an acrylic-based adhesive, whereas standard silver duct tape contains a totally different rubber-based adhesive … It is likely that the success of traditional duct tape is associated with the … adhesive that comes in direct contact with the wart during treatment.”
In fact, another later study13 published in 2016 engaged 60 immunocompetent participants and after two months demonstrated that duct tape adhered with cyanoacrylate (Super Glue) resolved 80% of the warts as compared to 60% that resolved in participants who received cryotherapy.
Quoting from a 2005 Mayo Clinic Health Letter,14 Greger reads the first line of the answer to a question posed by a grandmother whose 14-year-old grandson was embarrassed by the warts on his hand. “Odd as it may sound, duct tape is a legitimate and often effective treatment for common warts.” [..]
