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Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staffWarts don't require treatment, but you may want to treat them for cosmetic purposes and to prevent their spread. Home treatment is often effective in curing warts. Salicylic acid, an over-the-counter medication, or even duct tape and patience may be enough to resolve warts.
If you have stubborn warts and home treatment isn't helping, your doctor may suggest one of the following approaches, based on the location of your wart, the degree of your symptoms and your preferences. Doctors generally start with the least painful, least destructive methods, especially in young children.
- Freezing (cryotherapy, or liquid nitrogen therapy). Your doctor may use liquid nitrogen to destroy your wart by freezing it. This treatment isn't too painful, and is often effective, although you may need repeated treatments. Freezing works by causing a blister to form under and around your wart. Then, the dead tissue sloughs off within a week or so.
- Cantharidin. Your doctor may use cantharidin — a substance extracted from the blister beetle — on your warts. Typically, the extract is mixed with other chemicals, painted onto the skin and covered with a bandage. The application is painless, but the resulting skin blister can be uncomfortable. However, the blister has an important purpose. It lifts the wart off your skin, so your doctor can remove the dead part of the wart.
- Minor surgery. This involves cutting away the wart tissue or destroying it by using an electric needle in a process called electrodessication and curettage. However, the injection of anesthetic given before this surgery can be painful, and the surgery may leave a scar. For these reasons, surgery is usually reserved for warts that haven't responded to other therapies.
- Laser surgery. Laser surgery can be expensive, and it may leave a scar. It's usually reserved for tough-to-treat warts.
Other medications
If you have a bad case of warts that hasn't responded to standard treatments, your doctor may refer you to a dermatologist for further treatment including:
- Immunotherapy. This type of treatment attempts to harness your body's natural rejection system to fight off warts. Topical immunotherapy medications that may be prescribed for stubborn warts include squaric acid dibutylester (SADBE) and a gel called Imiquimod (Aldara). Imiquimod is marketed for the treatment of genital warts but has also proved effective for treating common warts. If your warts are severe and very treatment-resistant, your doctor may inject interferon-alfa medications directly into your warts.
- Bleomycin (Blenoxane). Your doctor may inject a wart with a medication called bleomycin, which kills the virus. Bleomycin is used infrequently for warts, but in higher doses, is used to treat some kinds of cancer.
- Retinoids. Derived from vitamin A, these medications disrupt your wart's skin cell growth. Your doctor may prescribe a retinoid cream or an oral medication.
Common warts can be tough to get rid of completely or permanently, especially when they appear around and under your nails. And, if you're susceptible to the wart virus, you probably always will be. New warts may crop up even after successful treatment. More than one treatment or more than one approach to treatment may be necessary to manage the problem. Warts are viral, and antibiotics are not effective for viral illnesses.
