why do bottles of wart remover have a warning on them warning not to use them on warts with a hair sticking out of them?
Interesting question, since at least one dandruff shampoo has salicylic acid as an active ingredient.
I think it may be that skin blemishes appearing to be warts with hairs sticking out may not actually be warts at all, but moles; irritate those little buggers too much and they can turn malignant.
Actually, that may not be true; looking around, it appears that perhaps irritating moles doesn’t cause them to turn malignant - I thought it was a widely accepted fact, but it turns out it isn’t. This misconception, though, still may be the reason for the instruction.
Actually, I’ve actually been told by a doctor that if your mole has a hair growing out of it that that’s one you don’t have to worry about.
The instruction about not using a salicylic acid-based over-the-counter treatment to burn off warts growing hairs is widespread and appears on numerous health sites (including one sponsored by the NIH).
Near as I can tell, this is part of the injunction to make sure it’s a wart you’re treating, and not a mole, melanoma or other cancerous or precancerous lesion. This would not be so much to avoid irritating and provoking something to become malignant, but to prevent incomplete therapy of dangerous lesions that could spread and even metastasize. For example, some melanomas have the nasty habit of regressing and appearing to completely disappear. By the time this happens, however, they often have metastasized. So theoretically at least you could think you’ve gotten rid of a wart but have another, more seriously problem entirely.
It would be dangerous to assume that a mole is “safe” because it is growing hair(s). Danger signs that a mole may be malignant include large size (greater than 6 mm or so), irregular borders, irregular/variable pigmentation, development of pain or itching, change in size or development of a raised/nodular area within a mole, etc.
There are “herbal” remedies sold for removing not only warts, but intended for home therapy of malignant lesions as well, some incorporating ingredients made from the bloodroot plant that are highly caustic. These can and have caused severe burns and deformity, as well as incompletely removing tumors (it’s hard to tell without doing a proper biopsy if you’ve gone deeply enough to take out the whole tumor).
As for warts, the home/herbal remedies are effective in some cases, but their reputations can be distorted by the fact that in most cases, warts regress and disappear on their own.
Jackmannii, M.D.
I’d love to hear the logic behind that.
Well, it wasn’t a dermatologist, it was one of those doctors you get in to see at the student health center.
My doctor, who is a dermatologist, told me the exact same thing when I was having a mole removed.
Unfortunately, he didn’t explain why moles with hairs weren’t in danger of turning malignant.
Maybe not malignant, but they might eat the roots off your irises to get the borers within. Moles are a “leech on the body politic.” :rolleyes: