Do toads cause warts?

­It's likely that the idea that toads can cause warts stems from the wart-like bumps that toads bear on their backs. These are actually glands that produce and secrete toxins that serve to defend toads from predators. All toads have them; some are more toxic than others. Although they resemble warts in appearance, these glands aren't warts. This is the first problem with the idea that toads can caus­e warts: If toads actually did have warts, they conceivably could be capable of producing warts in humans when handled, since warts can be transferred from person to person.

Toads would have to secrete a virus called the human papillomavirus (HPV) in order to cause warts. That's because warts are the result of an HPV infection, not toad secretions.

HPV may have a familiar ring to it. Beginning in 2006, a battle over mandatory HPV vaccinations took place in the U.S. One particularly virulent sexually-transmitted strain of the virus has been shown to cause cervical cancer in women and many groups (led largely by Women in Government, or WIG) wanted states to mandate the addition of HPV vaccines to the roster of inoculations required for children to attend school.

The state-by-state campaign by WIG lost some steam in 2007, after it was revealed that the group (which is composed of elected female officials around the U.S.) was partly funded by Merck, the pharmaceutical company that produced Gardasil, the only FDA-approved vaccine for HPV [source: AP]. The potential benefits for reducing the prevalence of cervical cancer (which affects around 10,000 women in the U.S. annually) appeared to outweigh any controversy, however [source: Rein and Wiggins]. By the end of 2008, 41 states had introduced legislation to create mandatory HPV inoculation programs and 19 states had already enacted them [source: NCSL].

An estimated 20 million people in the U.S. are infected with a form of the HPV virus; there are about 100 types of the virus [source: Rein and Wiggins, Mayo Clinic]. Most of them are fairly harmless to humans, producing benign maladies like warts, for example.

In addition to cervical cancer, HPV can also cause genital warts, another sexually transmitted disease. However, most people affected by a strain of the virus develop only regular old warts, however. Most of the time these warts appear on the hands or fingers of the sufferer and, aside from aesthetics, pose no threat to humans. Warts aren't cancerous, which is odd because they're the result of rapid growth of epidermal cells, and cancer is uncontrolled cellular growth. Warts will eventually stop growing, although they can easily spread. The HPV strain that causes common warts is hearty and can be transferred from person to person by shared objects.

To make matters worse, warts can sometimes be difficult to get rid of quickly without medicine. When a wart dies, it sloughs off skin cells that still carry HPV. These skin cells spread across previously unaffected areas of the skin and effectively produces a cycle of infection [source: Mayo Clinic]. Warts should eventually go away on their own, once the antibodies required to end the infection ward off the HPV.

There are options to get rid of warts for people too self-conscious to wait (and many people are). Freezing the warts off (cryotherapy) is a popular method. At the doctor's office, liquid nitrogen is used and some over-the-counter home remedies have salicyclic acid as the active ingredient. Both remedies create a blister around the site of a wart, which will be shed once the blister falls off. A similar goal is achieved using the extract from a blister beetle, which lives up to its name when it contacts the skin. In severe cases, laser surgery or prescription treatments used to combat genital warts may be prescribed.

Regardless of what course of treatment is taken to remove them, any common warts a person may have were certainly not contracted from handling a toad. The concept is as unfounded as one of the cures for warts, burying a cat at midnight [source: Chicago Sun-Times]. It's still a good idea to think twice before picking up a toad as it hops past. Those defensive toxins they secrete can affect humans by acting as a skin irritant. In addition, toads have the unfortunate habit of urinating when a human picks them up. That won't cause warts, sure, but it's still fairly gross.