A study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of intradermal and intralesional Purified Protein Derivative (PPD) for treatment of common warts in children

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: Viral warts are common dermatological diseases with wide range of treatment modalities. Utilization of various vaccines and skin test antigens has broadened the horizon of available immunotherapeutic agents for the treatment of warts. In this study, we compared efficacy and safety of intradermal and intralesional purified protein derivative (PPD) for treating common warts in children.Toevaluate efficacy and safety of intradermal and intralesional PPD in treatment of common warts in children.: 180 children (aged 5-15 years) with common warts were randomly divided to receive intradermal (n=90) PPD 10 TU/0.1 ml at middle third of right forearm or intralesional PPD (n=90) 0.1 ml in the largest wart once in 2-weeks till there is complete clearance or maximum of five injections whichever is earlier. Patients were followed at 4 week after last injection for assessment of response, adverse effects, and recurrence of common warts.: Complete, partial clearance and no response in 51.2%, 45.3% and 2.3% children was observed in intradermal group as compared to 54.2%, 42.5% and 1.1% response in intralesional group respectively. Recurrence of warts was observed in 1.2% and 2.2% children in intradermal and intralesional group respectively. Pain was the most common adverse effect in both groups followed by erythema lasting for 2-3 days not warranting for discontinuation of treatment in any patient.: Overall 96.5% and 96.7% patients in both intradermal and intralesional group responded to treatment respectively. We conclude that immunotherapy with PPD appears safe, effective, and acceptable treatment modality for common warts in children. Although intralesional group showed slightly higher efficacy for warts (0.2%), intradermal PPD has advantage of less pain, high patient satisfaction, less spillage of injection material onto surroundings and better compliance over intralesional group and hence can be considered as valuable first line treatment in children in resource poor developing countries.