Get rid of your warts using duct tape? Not sure…
November 14, 2006 – Bad news for those who thought they could get rid of their nasty warts with just a piece of duct tape. A new study1 conducted by Dutch researchers came to the conclusion that this treatment is no more effective than a placebo.
The duct tape used in this study is better known by its English term duct tape.
Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands recruited 103 children aged 4 to 12. These were divided into two groups for the six weeks of the study.
The first group “treated” their warts with a piece of duct tape. The second, which served as a control group, used an adhesive tissue that did not come into contact with the wart.
By the end of the study, 16% of the children in the first group and 6% in the second had disappeared, a difference the researchers called “statistically insignificant.”
About 15% of children in the first group also reported side effects, such as skin irritation. On the other hand, the duct tape seems to have contributed to a reduction in the diameter of the warts of the order of 1 mm.
The researchers had excluded warts located on the face, as well as genital or anal warts from their study.
In 2002, American researchers concluded, after studying 51 patients, that duct tape was an effective treatment for warts. Methodological differences could explain these contradictory results.
Jean-Benoit Legault and Marie-Michèle Mantha – PasseportSanté.net
Version revised on November 22, 2006
According to CBC.ca.
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1. de Haen M, Spigt MG, et al. Efficacy of duct tape vs placebo in the treatment of verruca vulgaris (warts) in primary school children. Arch Pediatr Adolescent Med 2006 Nov;160(11):1121-5.