Love your children—warts and all

by Dr. Sandra Johnson, Johnson Dermatology
 

As parents, we love our children unconditionally-- warts and all.  Warts are very common skin tumors.  Up to 25% of children ages 4-12 years will have at least one wart.  Warts are caused by the Human Papillomavirus (HPV).  They usually appear as a bump on the hands or feet.  Warts can occur on any skin surface however.  Because warts are caused by a virus, they are contagious and may spread on a person or onto other people.  Warts are spread by contact and will continue to spread until the immune system recognizes the virus.  Recognizing the virus is difficult for the body since HPV lives on in the skin and not in the blood.  Once a person recognizes the virus is abnormal however they should be able to rid the virus wherever it is and hopefully never get another wart again. 

A question I am asked a lot in clinic is “Why do you not just cut it out?”.  The answer is that since a wart is caused by a virus, one cannot cut out a virus.  This is similar to not being able to cut off your head when you have a cold.  The other question is “Why can’t you just give me a pill to take?”.  The answer is that there is no pill aimed at treating HPV (yet).  Even though we cannot cut it out or treat it with antibiotics, we can be successful at ridding the virus with other methods.  There are too numerous to mention traditional and nontraditional therapies aimed at getting rid of warts.  Many of these therapies may be found in our book:  Warts: Diagnosis and Management, an Evidence-Based Approach. My two favorite at home treatments are clear nail polish applied to all warts everyday or salicylic acid with or without duct tape to occlude the virus. In the clinic, the skin containing the virus is destroyed which is sometimes referred to treating from the outside.  Every wart usually needs to be treated.  A novel treatment that we patented while at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is injecting one wart with part of a yeast to stimulate the immune system to treat the virus from the inside out.  This is unique since only one of the warts needs to be treated.  Often in our clinic we will treat both from the outside with destruction as well as from the inside with immunotherapy. On average, four treatments are needed. 

To summarize, warts are caused by a virus.  There are a variety of methods utilized to rid warts.  The reason there are many treatment options is that no one treatment works best for all warts.  One last thing, one does not get warts from kissing frogs. Have a question for Dr. Johnson? Email us at contact@fortsmithmoms.com

Johnson Dermatology
Specializing in Skin Cancer - Providing Comprehensive Skin Care
Sandra Marchese Johnson MD, FAAD
Brad Russell Johnson MD, FAAD
Phone: 479.649.3376(derm)
Fax: 479.646.0133
www.johnsondermatology.com
9207 Highway 71 South Suite 9
Fort Smith, AR 72916

Back to Dermatology Advice