Verrucae - lots of them

[SocksAreNice]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask for advice about tackling a large and growing zoo of verrucae on my DSs feet and hands?

ASD DS is out of school with severe anxiety. When the first few verrucae appeared he was afraid to have them treated. He couldn't even look at an emery board without screaming and running away.

Over time the verrucae have multipled and he's got about 30 of them now on his hands and feet. The anxiety has subsided and he is calmer after home schooling for a while.

The penny has now firmly dropped with him that the verrucae are a bigger problem than the anxiety. After many different tentative treatment attempts, he's now willing to do basically anything to get them to go away. (as long as he does it himself as home.)

In recent weeks he's been painting them with silver nitrate every morning, and then debriding them (removing the hard skin) the next day with a surgical scalpel (I kid you not. This is still the boy who couldn't previously look at an emery board.)

He's also tried hard with bazuka Salicylic acid, the electric wartabator, the bazuka stuff that contains fire ant poison, Wartie Freeze, CryoIQ.

He's been very persistent with the silver nitrate and the hard skin on the warts is completely gone. The warts are so smooth that they are actually shiny.

The wartie freeze worked well on one large wart and the wart completely fell off. None of the others did though.

The CryoIQ was very good on one wart and froze it completely solid though not enough time has passed to see if it will actually die. The canister was £300 and ran out very fast so we did not buy another one.

The wartabator made one wart shrink, but after that it became too painful to use on any of the warts.

Really the wartie freeze, the silver nitrate and the debriding blade are the only things that are painless and cheap enough to keep doing. But they don't actually seem to make the blasted warts die. They are still there.

Last week two new warts appeared on his heel, after all the other ones had been on his toes. He's also getting new ones on his hands, and they have now spread to my husband's hands.

We took DS to a very good podiatrist but he is terrified to enter because of PTSD relating to surgery in infancy, which he is being actively treated for. But he can't get into the podiatrist's office.

I have been corresponding by email with the podiatrist and she said we should see the GP to ask if DS's immune system is low. She says that the treatments are really just there to make the immune system attack the warts and it's odd that DS's immune system is not doing the job.

DS is taking a multivitamin (no minerals yet) and a calcium, zinc and magnesium pill. I think he is short of iodine, and we have not yet managed to introduce other mineral supplements because he gets wild reactions to broader spectrum supplements. He has a good diet but no wheat or dairy.

He is seeing a paediatrican over zoom regularly to try to sort everything out more generally (nutrition and stress) and having therapy once a week and booked for EMDR.

I just wondered if anybody might have any ideas about how to get rid of the stupid warts? He's so fed up that he's literally willing to shove a red hot needle into them to cook them, but the podiatrist says he really shouldn't do that.

Could severe anxiety suppress his immune system and make him more susceptible to warts? He doesn't catch other bugs.

I asked the NHS GP and the GP said that warts are not infectious by skin contact so it is a coincidence that DS has so many. I have booked to see a different GP on the advice of the podiatrist.

Sorry I know this is an impossible question but just wondered if anybody had any ideas or had had this before?

When he does the silver nitrate, I get 8 x Avoca silver nitrate appllicators (the 96% version). I dissolve the silver nitrate in about 1 mm of water and he paints it on with a fine paint brush.

He caught the verrucae in the school swimming pool and the PE teacher said they no longer recommend kids cover feet with swimming socks when the have verrucae because they're not infectious. The GP told me the same.

What on earth made people think that verrucae are not infectious?! <headslap>

The NHS no longer treats verrucae because apparently they are really easy to treat with over the counter treatments, and often go away on their own.

Spoiler alert: They aren't and they don't. Not here anyway.

If he’s eating gluten free he could be low in B12. Google tells me that you’re more likely to contract warts and verrucas if you are deficient in B12.

Sorry, rant over.

@MyMindIsSoLoud Thanks, that's useful to know. He's been nearly gluten free for 11 years and has just switched to a coeliac diet about 3 weeks ago. He has been taking B12 for years but the paediatrician did genetic tests and says he has a problem processing inactive B12 to active B12.

DS had a verucae caught on a school residential trip, we covered it in duck tape and after a couple of weeks being deprived of oxygen and light it fell off.

I read a theory online that activation of B12 requires minerals that I know are probably deficient in his diet. I wonder if that might be part of the problem?

When we have tried him on broad spectrum vitamin and mineral supplements he had had difficult adverse reactions.

@ViciousCurrentBun Thanks, yes we tried that and the nail varnish treatment and neither worked. The duck tape fell off the nail varnish just didn't seem to stick for very long either. The podiatrist said we mustn't use duck tape because it had dangerous industrial adhesives which could be absorbed into the skin.

I wonder if his very high stress levels may be causing him to use B12 too fast as well. I know I get B12 deficiency symptoms if I am very stressed.

I had a verruca for about ten years and the only thing that actually worked (and I was shocked it did work) was homeopathic medication. I believe it was something called thuja.

i swear I had tried everything else and am not a believer in stuff like this particularly

@IDontLikeMondays88 Well that's certainly something we haven't yet tried. Thanks for mentioning it.

You could potentially try apple cider vinegar and duct tape, as someone else has suggested. It takes a lot of persistence though and you might not be able to get rid of them all, especially if you’re using a pumice stone which will make additional micro injuries in the skin and may risk further auto-inoculation from surrounding warts.

I’d like to see where they have obtained their evidence for HPV not being spread via skin to skin contact or contaminated surfaces? As far as I’m aware that’s exactly how verrucae are spread and the NHS website even maintains so!

I second what the podiatrist has mentioned mind about having him checked for immune/complement deficiencies. It is very unusual to have so many at once. I would make very clear to the next GP early on in the consultation that this is what you are after.

How old is your DS and when did the first warts appear? Did the podiatrist manage to get a look at them, either in person outside the office or photos? They're unlikely to be anything other than verrucae, but good to be certain.

I was briefly overrun by them during my first year at university. Poor diet and poor sleep I expect! I did treat them (half-heartedly tbh, with salicylic acid plasters) and they cleared within around 18 months. I must have had at least 20 at one point - all on my feet. Your son has my sympathy!

Salicylic acid works by removing the outer dead layers of skin and triggering the immune system into clearing the virus.

https://www.sr-skincare.uk/product/salicylic-acid-chemical-peel-kit/

@faithcrowley I totally agree about the GP thing. They're clearly definitely spread by skin contact, because they spread from the side of one toe to the side of the next. Then from the feet to the finger tips he was previously using to pick at them. We were a bit dumbfounded when the GP said that tbh.

How would DS be checked for immune problems? There's no chance at all that he's going to manage a blood test.

We have recently managed to introduce zinc suppliments which are meant to help in some people.

Also when he removed the last trace of gluten from his diet, his anxiety markedly reduced and has been much better ever since, so I'm slightly wondering whether it was that last trace of gluten that was messing with his immune system. We worry about taking a "wait and see" approach though, because so far, waiting has only got us more verrrucae.

@Flustration Thanks, yes that would fit with him now. He's so massively frazzled from school stuff. It's so hard to get him calmed down though. The verrucae arrived when he was 12. He came out of school at 13 and he's now 15 and trying to manage his GCSEs at home with no school. So not really that relaxing a business tbh. We have an EHCP and the council have been really helpful, so we're still very much in the system, thank goodness.

Hi - ages ago there was a girl from Suffolk - Charlotte - who had this and in her case it was an immune condition. She had treatment and is fine now. Might be worth a look - although very unusual

I tried with salicylic acid verruca patches when I had one that spread. It worked in combination with a supplement called l-lysine. They had been on my feet for years and I don’t know why the supplement worked but it seemed to

Apple cider vinegar, applied to a cotton wool pad and taped on, with a sock over the top to keep it on. Every night for a week. No need to do anything else with emory board or anything. Works every time for me (I get verrucas regularly if I go swimming and don't wear sliders poolside! Worst I've had is 10 on each foot)

Thuja? Isn’t that the yew tree? I thought it contained thujone, which is poisonous. I’m don’t know much about its health uses, though.

Another vote for thuja - you can buy it as a tincture and apply directly to the veruccae. It stains them an orangey brown colour but dries quickly. I had a few veruccae as a child and was told by doctors over the years that they’d eventually go away when my immune system kicked in, they didn’t, they got worse and worse. By the time I was early 20’s I was struggling to walk due to the pain and the doctors said if my immune system hadn’t kicked in by now then it never would. They were too extensive for surgery at that point and it was actually the doctor who suggested thuja. Can’t remember exactly how long it took to get rid of them but I applied it every day unless too painful as they start to crack and dry out.

SWIFT. It's a new treatment for verrucas that involves microwaves. There is a podiatrist local to me that does it. I had nearly as many verrucass as your DS and this removed them in 3 sessions. It did hurt though - each time the wand was aimed at a verruca it felt like somebody was sticking a drawing pin into my foot. It was also rather expensive- think it might have been £340 for the 3 sessions. A plus point compared to other treatments I have tried in the past is that there was no damage to the surrounding skin, so I was never in pain except during the session at the podiatrist.

I’ve cut from your OP to the end. Sorry.

But I recall one of those popular ‘See a doctor now, in this tent!’ shows 10-ish years ago where a young girl with endless, countless verrucae was immediate suspected of having an immune-suppressive condition, which proved to be right.

Having not read the thread at all, I apologise if that’s what everyone else is saying!

Yes, I was going to mention homeopathic Thuja 30c.

We've just got rid of two humungous ones from DD's feet, one of which pretty much covered half of the ball of her foot. It took a few weeks of taking it daily - maybe 5 weeks or so, and I was sure it wasn't working, but just as I was about to give up, they seemed to get very proud of the foot as if they were being pushed out, then one fell out and the other hung by a thread for a day or two before that one came out during a bath one night.

I wish I'd known about it years ago, as I had a painful one for more than 10 years that refused to budget (totally agree that the current GP fobbing-off mantra of them being quick and easy to get rid of is absolute horseshit, as is the idea they're not contagious from wet floors, eg when going swimming).

we’ve had a stubborn one (used bazuka on it. Never again - it grew) for maybe 6mths on. Dd8

Started to see a podiatrist who put silver nitrate on and covered it and did this for maybe 2/3mths and wasn’t working

and now she’s having Cryotherapy, or freezing with liquid nitrogen, and seems to be working - finally

def smaller and less painful after 2 sessions. 2 w apart

Tho after treatment it is sore /pricking /burning but gets better after a day or two

Consultant said hers is one of the most stubborn veruccas he has seen and has a really powerful blood supply hence why taking so long

She has been very brave !!

Doesn’t usually do on kids as they move foot after the first squirt as hurts /burns /stings and don’t finish the squirts and he says it’s pointless getting one squirt rather then 4/5 x 3 so 12/15

And never using bazuka again as that’s the worse thing for them

File the verrucas with an emery board. Cut a garlic clove in half and rub it over the verrucas and warts at night time. Cover with a plaster til morning. Do it every night until they're gone. Might take a couple of weeks for the really stubborn ones but it's the only thing that worked for me.