Background: Warts are widespread cutaneous and mucosal infections caused by human papilloma virus. Resistance to treatment is the main concern while dealing with cutaneous warts. Previous research has defined an ideal wart therapeutic modality as the one that is able to clear all present warts painlessly with no recurrences. Current therapeutics are still far away from meeting this definition. The growing evidence of the role of cell mediated immunity in wart resolution supports the use of various immunotherapeutics in treating cutaneous warts especially the recalcitrant ones. Candida antigen injection has recently emerged as a potential effective therapeutic option that needs confirmatory research trials on a large scale. The aim of this work is to evaluate the efficacy of intralesional Candida antigen injection in treating resistant warts in patients attending our clinic over a period of one year.
Subjects &Methods: Ninety-two adult patients with recalcitrant warts were included in this study. All patients were subjected to adequate dermatologic examination of warts regarding site, type and number, presence of distant warts at baseline and at each follow-up visit. All patients included were injected with 0.3ml of 1/1000 Candida antigen solution into the largest wart for 5 sessions biweekly.
Results: out of the 92 patients,80 patients (92.3%) responded to therapy; 55 patients (59.7%) achieved complete resolution, 25 (27.1%) patients demonstrated partial response and 12patients (13%) showed no response.
Conclusion: Our results indicate Candida antigen is an efficacious treatment option of recalcitrant warts that can be adopted in clinical practice.
Keywords: Wart, Resistance, Candida