Warts - Symptoms and treatment

What is a wart?

Wart is a harmless skin growth caused by one of the many human papillomaviruses (HPV). Normally they disappear without any treatment within 6 months to 3 years. They are common in children in the age group of 12 to 16. In few instances they become painful.

Causes

HPV enters through the broken skin and causes the top layer of the skin to grow rapidly which forms the wart. The incubation period varies between one to eight months.

Symptoms

Warts can be of different sizes and shapes. They can be rough and bumpy or flat and smooth. Inside the wart, tiny blood vessels grow which supply it with blood. They appear as dark spots at the centre of the wart. There are different type of warts and they grow anywhere on the body.

·         Common warts – Though they can grow on any of the body-part, mostly they are found on hands as gray-brown, rough dome shapes.

·         Plantar warts – They grow on the soles of the foot. As they grow bigger, they cause pain while walking.

·         Flat warts – They are mostly found on arms, face and legs as small pink, light brown or light yellow bumps with flat tops. They grow in clusters and generally are spread due to shaving.

·         Filiform warts – They are a type of flat wart that grow around nose, mouth and beard area. They are of flesh colour and look like a bunch of finger shapes.

·         Periungual warts – They appear around and under fingernails and toenails as irregular rough bumps.

·         Mosaic warts – A cluster of type of plantar warts. They generally grow on hand and soles.

Home-Treatments

While treating the warts yourself, care needs to be taken as the warts are highly infectious. If you need to rub the wart with pumice stone or a fingernail file, do not use the same tool on any other part of the body. Diabetic people should not treat the warts on their feet. Instead take doctors advice. Do not use home-treatment to remove facial warts or warts on any sensitive part of the body.

·         Salicylic acid patches – One needs to use these products regularly everyday for few weeks. To get optimum results, soak the wart in water at least for 15 minutes before the actual treatment.

·         Freezing – This is a quick wart removal treatment. However, it is not effective in all wart types. A spray of concentrated cold air is applied on the wart which kills the skin. You can then scrape away the wart’s surface.

·         Duct-tape – In this treatment, wart is covered with a small duct tape piece for many days. Then wart is soaked and rubbed to take off the dead skin. With this method, several rounds of treatments are required for complete wart removal.

Clinically, warts can be removed using liquid nitrogen or by surgery.

Warts are embarrassing for those who have it. Many over the counter methods are available for removal of warts. If these-treatments don’t work up to the mark, one should not hesitate to contact the general practitioner.