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Q. I had a wart surgically removed, but it came back. I then spent a nine-month period seeing a dermatologist and trying many different treatments he recommended. I had finally given up and told him I would not be returning.
Upon hearing this, he suggested I try Tagamet, the heartburn medicine. I began taking generic cimetidine (200 mg per day). The wart went away in less than two weeks and has never returned.
A. This unconventional use of the acid-suppressing drug cimetidine has been known for more than a decade. You may have been exceptionally lucky that your wart responded so well. A recent review of studies of this therapy concluded that “Current data do not support the use of H2-antagonists [cimetidine and ranitidine] for the treatment of common warts” (Annals of Pharmacotherapy, July/Aug. 2007).
Many years ago, when these drugs had first came out, my husband was taking one of them on a continuing basis. I noticed the life-long warts on his hands had vanished, and they have never come back. It was later I had read somewhere that this drug might have been the cure.