How Duct Tape as a Treatment for Warts Works
Duct tape as a treatment for warts does not seek to treat the underlying virus that causes the wart or to identify the “root” of the wart. Instead, it prevents the wart from spreading further by stopping the wart from contacting other parts of your skin.
Duct tape is made of three layers:
- A strong, stretchy layer that resembles a fabric
- A mesh layer
- An adhesive chemical layer
The effectiveness of duct tape treatment is as a result of the combination of strength in the upper layers and chemical adhesion in the bottom layer.
The duct tape adheres to the top layer of the wart, so that when you remove the tape, a layer of the wart will often come off with it. This may be less painful than remedies like freezing. Additionally, it uses fewer chemicals than over-the-counter topical treatments and is more cost effective than laser treatment.
There is older and newer research that seems to demonstrate that duct tape works better for wart treatment than other methods, such as freezing.
One 2003 study rates duct tape wart removal method to be 80 percent effective for speeding up the rate at which warts go away.
More clinical research is needed to discover if, and why, duct tape works to get rid of warts.