Duct Tape: No Magic Cure for Warts

In 2002, wart treatment made a significant leap forward, when a journal published a study showing that covering warts with duct tape for a few days was an effective means for getting rid of them.

Soon after publication, the word spread, and duct tape was widely touted as an easy and inexpensive cure for warts.

However, duct tape's reign as a wart remover may be coming to an end, with the publication of a new study which shows that treatment with duct tape is no better than no treatment at all.

In a group of 103 children with warts, duct tape only worked slightly better than a corn pad, which was given to the control group in this study. Children in this study were aged 4-12 years.

While many warts will disappear on their own, some will require cryotherapy (where they are frozen off) or several doses of salycylic acid, which can be tough to apply to children in this age group.

I guess duct tape will have to leave the medicine cabinet and head back to the tool chest, at least as far as wart treatments go.