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Home › Articles › Nutrition and Health › Potatoes, Bananas and Duct Tape

Potatoes, Bananas and Duct Tape

Uncovering the Facts on Childhood Warts

By Crystal Patriarche

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These types of warts are usually painless and strike the skin on the hands and fingers. HPV types 2 and 4 cause common warts.

According to AAD, common warts usually appear where skin has been broken, for example, where fingernails are bitten or hangnails picked. This is why they are common in children, who often bite their nails or break skin.

Plantar warts
Plantar warts usually occur on the soles of the feet and grow into the skin rather than surfacing as a bump or mound. Planter warts are painful, can attack blood vessels deep in the skin and are caused by HPV type 1, says Stengler.

Plantar warts have a bad reputation because they can be painful, feeling like a stone in the shoe, according to AAD.

Plane warts
Usually occurring in clusters, plane warts are small, flat and are skin-colored. According to AAD, plane warts (also known as flat warts), grow in large numbers from 20 to 100 at any one time. They can occur anywhere, but in children they are most common on the face.

Venereal warts
This type of wart affects the genital and anus areas and, hence, is also known as genital warts. They are spread by sexual contact. In children, it can be a sign of sexual abuse, says Stengler.

Genital warts are moist mounds of skin that look like cauliflower and are caused by at least four different types of HPV.

Treatment
Stengler and the AAD both agree that childhood warts often disappear over time without treatment. However, according to AAD, warts that are bothersome, painful or rapidly multiplying should be treated. Warts in adults often do not disappear as easily or as quickly as they do in children.

Over-the-counter topical acid is used as a conventional treatment for warts. The salicyclic acid works on the skin to slowly peel it away. Stengler says, however, that venereal warts need to be treated by a doctor.

Some warts can be frozen with liquid nitrogen, called cryosurgery, so that the wart cells are destroyed. This treatment is not too painful and usually does not cause scarring. Repeat treatments at one to three week intervals are sometimes necessary to get rid of the wart completely.

"The last resort is to surgically remove a wart," says Stengler. "This may be done for stubborn plantar warts that cause foot pain while a child is walking or standing."

Children's multivitamins can help for immune support. "Choose one that contains selenium, which inhibits viruses from replicating," he says. Stengler and other naturopathic doctors agree that antiviral herbs like Echinacea can help stimulate the immune system's response against the virus that is causing the wart to grow.

The inside of a fresh piece of banana peel taped to a plantar wart with adhesive tape every day for two to four weeks can help, too, because the peel contains a substance that kills warts, says Stengler.

Or you could always try the potato.

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