Warts

WHEN TO SEE YOUR DOCTOR

* Your wart is disfiguring or prevents normal functioning (as on a fingertip).

* The wart is painful, bleeding or changes shape or color.

* Your wart has grown larger than a pencil eraser.

* You're not positive it's a wart.

What Your Symptom Is Telling You

Let's try on a few of the good old myths about warts. Myth number one—you can get them from handling frogs. Nope. But warts can be transmitted from one person to another.

Well, how about Tom Sawyer's famous remedy? Rub your wart with potato or swing a dead cat over your head and bury it, and sooner or later, the wart vanishes. That's more like it. The dead cat isn't exactly a cure, but it will work as often as any other folk remedy, doctors say. The answer to these mysterious treatments is that two-thirds of all warts will vanish on their own within a year.

But how did you get it to begin with?

There are some 60 subtypes of the human papilloma virus on the surface of the skin that can cause warts. We're all exposed to wart viruses every day, by touching someone who has a wart or touching something they've touched. There's no clear explanation for why one individual either has warts or is wart-free. Some of us are just more susceptible than others. Warts are as individual as the viruses that produce them, but there are some basic types.

Common warts, often seen on the hands of children, are thick and rough. Flat warts are usually smooth bumps that are skin-colored and flat-topped. These warts are most often found on the hands or face, or on the lower legs of women who shave. Plantar warts are found on the bottom of the foot and palmar warts on the palm of the hand. And filiforme warts look like little groups of fingers or bristles protruding from the skin.

Genital warts are called condyloma and can lead to more serious health problems if left untreated.

Symptom Relief

Most wart treatments destroy or irritate the wart tissue until your body starts up an immune response to the virus. If your warts are numerous or bothersome enough, here's how your doctor can help.

Give them the acid test. Acids are often used to destroy wart tissue, says Libby Edwards, M.D., chief of dermatology at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Your doctor can prescribe a solution for you to drip on the wart daily for a month or two. The acids are often a combination of salicylic acid and lactic acid. They can also be applied to the wart by covering it with a plaster—an adhesive piece of fabric with medicine on the sticky side.

Freeze them away. Another common wart cure is freezing with liquid nitrogen. This method has about an 80 percent success rate, says Stephen Webster, M.D., a dermatologist in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. This treatment is somewhat painful, but it's also the fastest way to eliminate a wart.

Another chemical doctors use to fight warts is a chemotherapy agent called bleomycin. "It's injected right into the wart and makes the wart go away," says J. Michael Maloney, M.D., a dermatologist in private practice in Denver. Be aware that in cases where the wart is on a finger, bleomycin may cause scarring that can affect the re-growth of the fingernail, he adds.

Slash and burn. If your warts don't give up after other kinds of treatment, they can be directly removed. After applying a local anesthetic, your doctor can cauterize warts with an electric needle, cut them out surgically or vaporize them with a laser. The disadvantage of these treatments is potential scarring.

Do-It-Yourself Wart Removal

If you don't feel your warts are serious enough for a trip to the doctor, or you just want to try for a cure on your own, here are a few things you can try.

Do the drip. You can use the same acids your doctor would prescribe, but in milder strengths, says Dr. Maloney. Acid-containing over-the-counter remedies like Compound W or various wart plasters will work just as well as the doctor's solutions. "It's slow, but it works," he says. (Do not use over-the-counter products on genital warts.)

Hypnotize them. It may sound weird, but it can work. Research has shown that 20 to 50 percent of people who can deeply relax and give themselves hypnotic suggestions can eliminate their warts. "It doesn't matter whether you think you are hypnotizable," says Nicholas Spanos, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottowa, Ontario. "What makes the suggestions work is your ability to vividly imagine your warts flaking off and growing smaller, and your skin feeling warm and tingling as it heals."

Research results indicate that self-hypnosis is even more effective on warts than salicylic acid, Dr. Spanos says.