Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Duct tape gets rid of warts - now we both know

In last week's Best-of episode of NPR's 'Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!' NBC news anchor Brian Williams was asked a series of questions about duct tape - the worlds most useful product.

Turns out it's also better than cryotherapy at removing warts. Here's how to do it, and a link to the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine studies in 2002 that confirmed the treatment.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ummmm...the study cited states that duct tape was not signifcantly better than a placebo and also duct tape caused a skin reaction in 15% of the children...don't know what study they were reading

Zohar said...

I never talked about it's comparison with a placebo - just about it's comparison to cryotherapy. And here's the study & conclusion referred to.

The Efficacy of Duct Tape vs Cryotherapy in the Treatment of Verruca Vulgaris (the Common Wart)

Dean R. Focht III, MD; Carole Spicer, RN; Mary P. Fairchok, MD

Conclusion: Duct tape occlusion therapy was significantly more effective than cryotherapy for treatment of the common wart.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2002;156:971-974

Anonymous said...

I've used duct tape on warts on my big toe, they were there for 3 years and spreading, I was worried about loosing my toe or something, using duct tape to completely cover the infected area effectively removed all traces of the warts, weeks afterward the 2 on my hand disappeared, I think destroying the ones on my foot, helped my body enough to kill the other ones.