I recently read the August edition of Infectious Diseases in Children and learned a couple of interesting things so I thought I would share them.
The first was a study looking at the prevalence of HPV (human papilloma virus) in teenage girls before and after the introduction of the HPV vaccine. Over 4000 samples were tested before and after the vaccine's introduction. Before the vaccine was released the prevalence of HPV in these samples was 11.5%. After the vaccine was released the prevalence was 5.1%. This is a 56% decrease. (and only 62.5% of the poplulation studied had received all three doses of the vaccine). This study shows that the HPV vaccine works well.
The second was a review of the treatment of warts. (NOT the ones in the genital area). Warts are frustrating to us because there is no reliable way to get them to go away. All warts go away on their own but it can take 1-2 years and most of us are not that patient. The review article concluded that nothing works well or quickly but that salicylic acid (sold over the counter in products such as Compound W) works the best. They found that regular use of it for 12 weeks works about 75% of the time. The article found that freezing warts doesn't work. A little success is found when someone experienced freezes it but even then there is a low success rate. The article also looked at the use of duct tape. They found that using silver duct tape might work but transparent duct tape definately doesn't work. My conclusion after reading this article is that salicylic acid might work but that wart removal is frustrating to all!
