A common wart is a lump caused by an HPV infection your immune system has been ignoring for months ¹. Warts vanish when the immune system finally notices and attacks. The pitch for tape: sealing the wart softens it for filing, and the rubberised adhesive irritates the skin enough to poke the immune system awake. Plausible, not proven — it's the same idea behind the irritant therapies a dermatologist uses.

The trials don't agree. The famous one taped 51 kids and cleared 85%, beating freezing ² — but it was small, unblinded, with no placebo arm. Two attempts to replicate it found nothing: in 80 adults, tape cleared 21% versus 22% for an inert pad, identical ³. The honest read: modestly useful in children, probably inert in adults, and the 85% is almost certainly inflated. The dermatology guidelines list it as a patient-preference option, not first-line ¹.

One detail rescues the optimist. The positive trial used silver tape (rubberised, irritating); both failures used clear tape (engineered not to irritate) ⁴. If irritation is the mechanism, they weren't testing the same thing. Nobody has run the trial that would settle it.

Use silver tape, run the full eight weeks, and file each cycle. This is the protocol the 2002 trial actually used ².

If tape does nothing, or you'd rather skip it: salicylic acid from the pharmacy clears roughly half of users, against a third on placebo, and has the best evidence of any topical ⁵. Clinic cryotherapy (liquid nitrogen) is a step up for stubborn ones. And a wart that isn't bothering you is fine to leave alone — half clear within fifteen months untreated ⁶.