A potential medical revolution
It turns out that the sore, callused bit on my big toe that's been getting steadily worse over the last month or two is actually a verruca. Ugh. I've not had a verruca since I was a teenager, when I used to swim competitively in swimming pools across the county and consequently often had a crop of up to half a dozen at any one point.
So what to do with it?
As with any health issue, I went straight off to my personal new-age health guru for advice, and their response was essentially the reassuring, ritual "more research required". However, they did suggest that:
a) they might get better own their own but they probably won't very quickly
b) salicylic acid is probably the best bet for a topical active treatment - there's not much evidence that the other stuff is a net benefit with the side effects
c) going to your GP for a squirt of liquid nitrogen will hurt like hell and probably isn't much better than (b)
Widening the net slightly to include the wackier edges of practice (i.e. single RCTs) suggests that Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy might be more effective than liquid nitrogen. Even better, the side effects are pretty minimal, even by comparison with salicylic acid.
It seems nobody really knows how duct tape might work. As I've mentioned on here before, I'm keen on moist wound healing - the fairly-recent discovery that wounds heal about twice as fast if you keep them moist instead of letting them dry out and scab. It occurred to me that the mechanism of Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy for warts might be the similar, or a least analogous, as that of moist wound healing. If skin heals wounds much faster when kept moist, might the same not be true of a human papilloma virus-induced growth? It seems very plausible to me. If it is the case, then hydrocolloid dressings - the cunning super-plasters that occlude a wound and keep it clean but moist while managing 'excess wound exudate' - should help cure warts, probably as well as Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy and maybe even better.
(I note that conversely, Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy might well be a significantly cheaper but still-effective alternative to hydrocolloid dressings for wounds. Any of my band-groupie friends have any tales of people injuring themselves while setting up, patching themselves up with gaffer tape, and the wound healing surprisingly quickly?)
So: my proposal is a new form of therapy for warts: hydrocolloid dressings.
There is, so far as I am aware, no evidence whatsoever of this having been even attempted by anyone, ever, let alone rigorous evidence of its safety and efficacy. How can you ethically do experiments on such revolutionary treatments? Back in the eighteenth century, Jenner simply used a small boy as a subject to test his ideas about smallpox vaccination, but I don't think that would stand scrutiny with a modern Human Subjects Ethics Committee.
So I decided to follow boldly in the path of centuries of medical self-experimenters like Horace Wells and Barry Marshall, and use myself as the guinea pig. This very morning, I bravely took a step forward for human healthcare by sticking a hydrocolloid dressing on my verruca.*
* Materials and Methods: A 'Compeed' brand hydrocolloid dressing was applied to the plantar wart located on the subject's right big toe, in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.
If this dangerous, untested therapy should turn out to be lethal, let this post stand as testament that I did what I did in a pioneering effort to make the world a (very slightly) better place. And to get rid of this bloody verruca, which is annoying me.
Update: It's now more than 12 hours since I applied the dressing, and I aten't dead yet! Has been a lot less uncomfortable to walk on during the day. Verruca seems to be still there, although a lot harder to see.
So what to do with it?
As with any health issue, I went straight off to my personal new-age health guru for advice, and their response was essentially the reassuring, ritual "more research required". However, they did suggest that:
a) they might get better own their own but they probably won't very quickly
b) salicylic acid is probably the best bet for a topical active treatment - there's not much evidence that the other stuff is a net benefit with the side effects
c) going to your GP for a squirt of liquid nitrogen will hurt like hell and probably isn't much better than (b)
Widening the net slightly to include the wackier edges of practice (i.e. single RCTs) suggests that Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy might be more effective than liquid nitrogen. Even better, the side effects are pretty minimal, even by comparison with salicylic acid.
It seems nobody really knows how duct tape might work. As I've mentioned on here before, I'm keen on moist wound healing - the fairly-recent discovery that wounds heal about twice as fast if you keep them moist instead of letting them dry out and scab. It occurred to me that the mechanism of Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy for warts might be the similar, or a least analogous, as that of moist wound healing. If skin heals wounds much faster when kept moist, might the same not be true of a human papilloma virus-induced growth? It seems very plausible to me. If it is the case, then hydrocolloid dressings - the cunning super-plasters that occlude a wound and keep it clean but moist while managing 'excess wound exudate' - should help cure warts, probably as well as Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy and maybe even better.
(I note that conversely, Duct Tape Occlusion Therapy might well be a significantly cheaper but still-effective alternative to hydrocolloid dressings for wounds. Any of my band-groupie friends have any tales of people injuring themselves while setting up, patching themselves up with gaffer tape, and the wound healing surprisingly quickly?)
So: my proposal is a new form of therapy for warts: hydrocolloid dressings.
There is, so far as I am aware, no evidence whatsoever of this having been even attempted by anyone, ever, let alone rigorous evidence of its safety and efficacy. How can you ethically do experiments on such revolutionary treatments? Back in the eighteenth century, Jenner simply used a small boy as a subject to test his ideas about smallpox vaccination, but I don't think that would stand scrutiny with a modern Human Subjects Ethics Committee.
So I decided to follow boldly in the path of centuries of medical self-experimenters like Horace Wells and Barry Marshall, and use myself as the guinea pig. This very morning, I bravely took a step forward for human healthcare by sticking a hydrocolloid dressing on my verruca.*
* Materials and Methods: A 'Compeed' brand hydrocolloid dressing was applied to the plantar wart located on the subject's right big toe, in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.
If this dangerous, untested therapy should turn out to be lethal, let this post stand as testament that I did what I did in a pioneering effort to make the world a (very slightly) better place. And to get rid of this bloody verruca, which is annoying me.
Update: It's now more than 12 hours since I applied the dressing, and I aten't dead yet! Has been a lot less uncomfortable to walk on during the day. Verruca seems to be still there, although a lot harder to see.