Oral zinc sulphate in the treatment of recalcitrant viral warts: randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Astringents in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Viral warts are common dermatological diseases; although the rate of spontaneous recovery is high, it usually takes a long time, and some patients might not show this spontaneous healing.

Zinc has an important effect on the immune system and it has been used as an immunomodulator to treat a variety of skin disorders.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 40 patients were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young children, children, teenagers, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Eighty patients with viral warts (common, plantar and plane) were all resistant to all forms of treatment.

Each patient had > 15 warts.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Astringents group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Some patients received a placebo instead of Astringents, giving a reference point.

This was a placebo-controlled clinical trial.

Another 40 patients were given a placebo oral treatment in the form of glucose, and followed-up for the same period.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Analysis of Variance, Astringents, Chronic Disease, Nausea, Warts, Zinc and Zinc Sulfate.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Astringents in 40 patients.

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (The British journal of dermatology), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.