Question:
I have quite a few benign melanoma. A friend of mine brought me
Verrutol from Turkey. It is said to remove melanoma. But searching on
the web I could only find "Verrutol" in turkish pages. I would'n like
to test it on me.
Any of you know if this really works ?
Answer:
Melanomas are by definition not benign and it would be odd to have "quite
a few" that were not metastases of the original one. You may be using
"melanoma" to describe pigmented moles or age spots or some other pigmented
benign skin lesions. The treatment for these differs, so we would need to
know for sure what kind of lesion you have before any useful advice could be
given.
I looked at the Google search for Verrutol, and since I don't read Turkish,
all I could figure out was that it seems to be a topical solution used for
curing condyloma accuminata (a kind of malignant warty growth caused by
human papillomaviruses). There were also some words that I took to mean
iodinated alcohol, so perhaps that is one of the ingredients. I suspect it
is some sort of chemical exfoliant that helps remove warts by causing the
underlying skin cells to divide and push the infected tissue to the surface
where it will eventually be rubbed off. I doubt that this would work on
moles.
If you could find out what its chemical components are, I could look them up
in MEDLINE to see if there are any reports of its use and what the outcomes
and side effects were. Verrutol seems to be a product of the Orva
pharmaceutical company, and this may be their address and fax number (as I
say, I can't read Turkish, but this seemed a likely address):
ORVA ILAC SAN.
Bagdat Cad. No:377/5 S.Bakkal/IST. Tel: (216) 302 41 66 Fax: 385 70 16
If you write Turkish, perhaps you can fax them and find out what the
ingredients in Verrutol are.
