Efficacy and safety of intralesional vitamin D3 injection in wart
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54361/LJMR.20.2.36Keywords:
Warts, Vitamin D3, SkinAbstract
Background: Verrucae, or warts, are the benign proliferations of mucosa and skin. They present over the hands in most patients but can occur anywhere on the surface of the skin or the mucosa.Aim: To investigate both the safety and effectiveness of intralesional cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) in the management of warts.Materials and Methods: This observational study included 40 patients with cutaneous warts, conducted from April 2023 to April 2024 at the Alirada clinic. After administering lignocaine (0.2 mL, 20 mg/mL), vitamin D3 (0.2 mL, 15 mg/mL) was injected into the base of the warts. Injections were repeated every two weeks for a maximum of four sessions or until complete resolution Results: The mean age was 30.85 ± 12.51 years, with a mean wart duration of 15.75 ± 12.15 months and an average of 7.8 ± 6.7 warts per patient. The group comprised 45% males and 55% females. Wart types included: filiform (5%), palmoplantar (70%), plane (10%), and verruca vulgaris (15%). Complete resolution occurred in 65% of cases, moderate response in 15%, mild response in 15%, and no response in 5%. At baseline, 10 patients (25%) reported pain due to the warts, primarily in palmoplantar warts, with 90% resolution within 14 days of treatment. After treatment, post-injection pain occurred in 12 patients (30%), mostly transient and resolving within 3–5 days. Other side effects included swelling (20%), nodule formation (7.5%), and pigmentary changes (hyper- or hypo-) (2.5%), with no hypopigmentation reported. Treatment response was positively correlated with gender and verruca vulgaris but negatively correlated with plane wartsConclusion: Intralesional vitamin D3 treatment is simple, effective, affordable, safe, and easy to administer in outpatient clinics. However, small sample sizes limit generalizability for certain wart types.
Downloads
References
1. Nofal A, Abd Elmonsef E, Elkholy B. An overview of various lines in the treatment of warts: review article. Egypt J Hosp Med. 2022;86(1):570-573. doi:10.21608/ejhm.2022.215111.
2. Forcier M, Musacchio N. An overview of human papillomavirus infection for the dermatologist: disease, diagnosis, management, and prevention. Dermatol Ther. 2010 Sep-Oct;23(5):458-476.
3. Ahmad S, Singh S, Anand N, et al. A review on role of human papilloma virus (HPV) in health-related diseases. Adv Med Dent Health Sci. 2020;3(3):34-40. doi:10.5530/amdhs.2020.3.9.
4. Wilson M, Wilson P. Close encounters of the microbial kind. In: Everything you need to know about common infections. Cham (CH): Springer; 2021. p. 451-461. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-56978-5.
5. Nasr M, Mohamed S, Elkholy B. New lines in the treatment of multiple warts. Egypt J Hosp Med. 2022;88(1):3990-3993. doi:10.21608/ejhm.2022.254073.
6. Friedman P. Management of difficult-to-treat warts: traditional and new approaches. Am J Clin Dermatol. 2021 Jun;22(3):379-394.
7. Abd El-Magid W, Nada E, Mossa R. Intralesional injection of vitamin D3 versus zinc sulfate 2% in treatment of plantar warts: a comparative study. J Dermatolog Treat. 2021 Apr;32(3):355-360.
8. Shalaby M, Hasan M, Elshorbagy M, et al. Diagnostic and therapeutic implications of vitamin D deficiency in patients with warts: a case-controlled study. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2022 Mar;21(3):1135-1142.
9. Maheswari A, Bothra A, Adhicari P, Dutta B, Das S. Therapeutic outcome and safety of intralesional vitamin D3 in the treatment of cutaneous warts. IP Indian J Clin Exp Dermatol. 2022;8(1):47-50.
10. Al-Eitan L, Tarkhan A, Alghamdi M, et al. Transcriptome analysis of HPV-induced warts and healthy skin in humans. BMC Med Genomics. 2020 Mar 5;13(1):35. doi:10.1186/s12920-020-0700-7.
11. Sorour N, Elesawy F, Abdou A, et al. Intralesional injection of vitamin D in verruca vulgaris increases cathelicidin (LL37) expression: therapeutic and immunohistochemical study. J Dermatolog Treat. 2022 Jan;33(1):291-296.
12. Goodarzi A, Farshidzadeh M, Behrangi E, et al. A comprehensive review on the relationship between serum vitamin D levels and cutaneous warts, molluscum contagiosum, and recurrent herpes simplex. Iran J Dermatol. 2021;24(1):53-56.
13. Mohamed E, El Taieb M, Abd El-Sabour G. Intralesional vitamin D3 versus purified protein derivatives in the treatment of multiple cutaneous warts: comparative study. Egypt J Hosp Med. 2019;76(2):3589-3594.
14. Elsayed Ghaly N, El-Ashmawy A, Abou Zeid M, Shaker E. Efficacy and safety of intralesional injection of vitamin D3 versus tuberculin PPD in the treatment of plantar warts: a comparative controlled study. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2021 Apr;20(4):1231-1240.
15. Kavya M, Shashikumar B, Harish M, Shweta B. Safety and efficacy of intralesional vitamin D3 in cutaneous warts: an open uncontrolled trial. J Cutan Aesthet Surg. 2017 Apr-Jun;10(2):90-94.
16. Lohita M, Geetakiran A, Akshaykumar V, et al. Evaluation of effectiveness of intralesional vitamin D3 injections in the treatment of warts. Eur J Mol Clin Med. 2022;9(7):307-315.
17. Raghukumar S, Ravikumar B, Vinay K, et al. Intralesional vitamin D3 injection in the treatment of recalcitrant warts: a novel proposition. J Cutan Med Surg. 2017 Jul-Aug;21(4):320-324.
18. Sharma G, Sharma S. Efficacy of intralesional immunotherapy with vitamin D3 injection in cutaneous warts: a clinical observational study. Clin Dermatol Rev. 2023;7(3):272-276.
19. Javed M, Tahir M, Hanif S, et al. Efficacy and safety of intralesional vitamin D3 in the treatment of plantar warts. Pak Armed Forces Med J. 2022;72(6):2055-2058.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Hana Hussein Benjuma (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access Policy
Libyan journal of medical Research (LJMR).is an open journal, therefore there are no fees required for downloading any publication from the journal website by authors, readers, and institution.
The journal applies the license of CC BY (a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). This license allows authors to keep ownership f the copyright of their papers. But this license permits any user to download , print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work.
The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.
Editorial Policy
The publication of an article in a peer reviewed journal is an essential model for Libyan journal of medical Research (LJMR). It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editorial, the peer reviewer and the publisher.
Any manuscript or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.
Authorship Policy
The manuscript authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution and intellectual input to the research submitted to the journal, including design, performance, interpretation of the reported study, and writing the manuscript. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the manuscript but without intellectual input should only be recognized in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Also, one of the authors should be selected as the corresponding author to communicate with the journal and approve the final version of the manuscript for publication in the LJMR.
Peer-review Policy
- All the manuscripts submitted to LJMR will be subjected to the double-blinded peer-review process;
- The manuscript will be reviewed by two suitable experts in the respective subject area.
- Reports of all the reviewers will be considered while deciding on acceptance/revision or rejection of a manuscript.
- Editor-In-Chief will make the final decision, based on the reviewer’s comments.
- Editor-In-Chief can ask one or more advisory board members for their suggestions upon a manuscript, before making the final decision.
- Associate editor and review editors provide administrative support to maintain the integrity of the peer-review process.
- In case, authors challenge the editor’s negative decision with suitable arguments, the manuscript can be sent to one more reviewer and the final decision will be made based upon his recommendations.
https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2413-6069
