Warts are benign tumors caused by oncogenic human papovavirus which has been clearly identified on electronmicroscopy, although repeated attempts at culture have not been successful. Various therapeutic modalities have been tried for the treatment of warts, however there is no saisfactory method and the clinical course as well as the prognosis is always variable. Recently several authors have reported successful therapeutic results in the treatment of warts by DNCB sensitization method, based on the findings that warts are often regressing spontaneously and tb,at the spontaneous regression seems to depend on host´s ability to mount an immune response against the wart virus.
The present study was undertaken to evaluate the DNCB sensitization method for possible routine use in the treatment of warts. Fifteen cases including five verruca vulgaris and ten verruca plans juvenilis patients were sensitized with 1000㎍ of DNCB in acetone solution on either side of their inner forearms. Seven or ten days after sensitization, several warts, which were unintentionally selected, were challenged with 0.05 to 0. lml of weaker DNCB solution (50㎍-25㎍/0. lml) at weekly interval. Four patients with verruca vulgaris and three patients with verruca plana juvenilis did not return after 1 to 4 times of challenge, however six out of these 7 patients showed a slight decrease in size and number of the warts.
One patient with verruca plana juveniles developed marked irritative and delayed cutaneous hypersensitivity reaction to the 3 times of challenge, so that this patient was excluded from further study. The remaining 7 patients consisted of 1 verruca.-vulgaris and 6 verruca plana juvenilis patients showed complete disappearance of alr warts including those which were never challenged, after 1 to 13 times of DNCB challenge application. The authors reviewed the possible therapeutic mechanism of DNCB sensitization in the wart patients, the possible advantage and disadvantage of this method and concluded that this method can be cautiously used in selected patients with warts whose response to the conventional treatment methods are poor.
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