When it comes to verrucas, many people ask why some verruca will disappear on their own, and others require months, or years, of continual treatment? To answer this question, we need to focus on what causes verrucas, and why they are so difficult to treat using the traditional freezing and acid methods.

What cause verrucas?

There are 150 genotypically different types of HPV, and 7 common strains that cause warts and verruca. Spontaneous resolution and response to treatment depends on many variables, including age, length of time the verruca has been present, where the wart is on the body, and the type of HPV.

The HPV virus creates a microenvironment in the skin that encourages the survival and reproduction of the virus, effectively hiding its existence from the body’s immune system.

There is clinical evidence that shows the longer the infection has persisted, the poorer the cure rate. Verruca that present on the feet in particular are difficult to resolve. The statistics tell us that 42% of verruca will disappear within 6 months, but if the condition persists for longer than 6 months, the chances of the virus clearing up without treatment drops to just 8%.

While warts and verruca are not life threatening, they do cause pain that can limit activities, and they can spread across the hands, feet, and to other areas of the body. This leaves the many long-standing sufferers in the UK with limited options.

Liquid nitrogen has been clinically proven to be a poor solution for verruca patients, with one UK clinical trial showing a cure rate of just 14% when compared to acid treatment, another common verruca treatment which also showed a 14% clearance rate.

Liquid nitrogen destroys verruca tissue by freezing, while acid treatment is a form of chemical destruction. The aim of both of these treatments is to destroy the verruca, and lasers, radiofrequency and the majority of other treatments available seek to do the same thing. The treatments begin at the surface and continue until sufficient depth is reached – causing blistering, lasting pain, and risking scarring. From a clinical research perspective, all of these methods show low efficacy in clinical studies and trials.

The key to effectively treating verruca is to trigger the body’s own immune response, rather than simply destroying the infected tissue. Independent clinical research has shown that microwave verruca treatment with Swift activates immune signalling pathways in the body, alerting the immune system to the presence of the verruca and clearing the infected tissue.

This independent clinical research was published in the European Journal of Dermatology – read the full paper, including the research on immune pathways, here.