Over the last few years, several clinical trials have been done comparing salicylic acid, a sugar pill and cryotherapy. Surprisingly, application of salicylic acid was much better than a sugar pill and even better than cryotherapy.
Several studies showed that cryotherapy was crap- it did nothing. Two studies showed that duct tape with cryotherapy was no good either. So for anyone with warts, at least you know what to avoid.
What is also surprising that when the wart was left alone or treated with a sugar pill, the results were comparable to duct tape and cryotherapy. This means that anyone who pays for cryotherapy is a fool.
Even though many new compounds have been released into the market to treat warts, the evidence for 5 fluorouracil, bleomycin, interferon, photodynamic therapy or dinitrochlorobenzene is still not available. In addition, these treatments are also expensive. Just because a drug is new does not mean it will work. Health care workers who always write the latest prescriptions generally do not think logically when it comes to effectiveness. Some health care workers simply write prescriptions for new drugs because they get a paid holidays/gifts by the drug companies.
So what should a consumer do?
There is ample evidence that topical use of salicylic acid is better than most treatments. The warts do take time to disappear, but treatment is readily available and cheap. When it comes to use of cryotherapy, one should rethink about going for more treatment. Evidence currently shows that it does not work, is expensive, and painful. And what about duct tape? – well, use it to seal air leaks in your home.
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001781.html
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