Talk:Onychomycosis

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[edit] Home remedies

Onchomycosis can be caused by many different fungi, and many other conditions like a psoriatic nail and paronychia can look so much like it that dermatologists still need to have a lab workup done. What was the causal agent, if any, of the wife's onychomycosis that was relieved with vinegar? How can anyone possibly give universal medical advice based on one person's kitchen experiments with the application of 19th century hygiene principles to an (I strongly suspect) undiagnosed condition?

Mercurochrome contains mercury and is banned in the US. All sorts of these common home disinfectants were tested against fungal skin and nail infections in the 1910's to 1950's and the only one that stood out as somewhat effective was Whitfield's ointment, with the active ingredient benzoic acid. But even it doesn't stand up to scientific comparison as a serious onychomycosis remedy. The common fungi causing dermatophyte onychomycosis are too deeply seated in the nail to be affected by materials applied to the surface (unless the materials are combined with chemical nail softeners under occlusion). Mercurochrome is commonly used in developing countries to treat fungal ear canal infestation (otomycosis), but there the fungus is right at the surface. Mercurochrome can't even penetrate to kill the endospores within spore-forming bacteria.

Onychomycosis isn't life-threatening but casual treatment recommendations based on anecdotes are no more helpful here than they are in any other disease. No doubt carrot juice and staying optimistic cured somebody's wife's cancer somewhere, but there's a serious ethical problem with extending this observation into a general prescription. Yes, any individual could make a novel observation -- but there's nothing novel about applying vinegar, iodine, garlic, lemon peel, oregano, etc. against fungal skin infections. It's been done. Tea tree oil is still being investigated but results are mixed (for references go to Entrez PubMed website and search on keywords: tea tree oil onychomycosis. Also: tea tree oil tinea. Also: tea tree oil dermatophyte). Keywords for the otomycosis statement above are otomycosis mercurochrome.

Summerbell 18:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Remember, Wikipedia does not exist to provide medical or health advice. For medically oriented articles such as this one the focus of the article is etiology and the popular treatments, peer reviewed scientifically proven treatments as well as popular folk remedies. Even if these folk remedies are totally useless or even counter productive and dangerous. This provides those reading the article a good overview of all the available "treatments," and more importantly the place of the disease within our society as a whole. Besides anyone reading Wikipedia as their sole source of diagnoses and treatment information has greater problems. 130.71.96.19 16:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)



what is the life cycle of onychomycosis

  • Mercurochrome cured it for me. Unfortunately, this probably counts as original research. -- ProveIt 17:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone interested in a picture for this article?

I could get one. The question is, would anyone really want to see it?

The article lacks a good quality image, go for it. Pgr94 05:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vinegar

My wife had an infection and cured it by soaking the infected toe for 30 minutes in vinegar every day for 3 months. She would keep the nail as trimmed as possible the whole time. Don't cause your body stress with something like Lamisil. Save your money and health.

[edit] FDA Topical Antifungal Monograph

I wanted to add something on the FDA OTC Topical Antifungal Monograph, but all I could find were some very general bits of info on the FDA website (see [1] and [2]). I also haven't been able to find anything on the FDA's 1994 ruling that said that no OTC anti-fungal product was effective on nails, and required the wording "this product is not effective on scalp or nails" on all OTC anti-fungal products (even if they were still allowed to use trademarks such as Fungi-Nail!). The closest I could find was this DOC file Comparison of Labeling for All Topical Antifungals Treating Athlete’s Foot. Can anyone provide better information? BlankVerse 15:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ineffectiveness of Tea-tree oil - evidence?

  • Tea tree oil is a known antifungal. The topical application of high levels is a verified remedy for some dermatophytic skin infections although not for onychomycosis, where the fungus is often too deeply nested in dense subsurface nail tissue to be full expunged by topically applied materials of any kind.[1]

The article that is referenced does not say that tea-tree oil doesn't work because the fungus is too deep subsurface. This needs more evidence or is WP:OR. Pgr94 18:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of passage

The section related to tea tree oil was removed from the 'natural remedies' section via this edit by User:68.36.170.182. Was this removal in accordance with consensus? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it was because of the WP:OR reference to the fungus being too deep to be treated by Tea tree oil. If you want to put it back in and either find a source for this claim or remove it feel free. Personally I tried treating my fungus militantly with Tea tree oil, with four treatments a day. During this period the fungus, which had been advancing, went into remission in all my nails, but the fungus under a few toe nails was persistent. I eventually stopped treatment and the fungus has not returned in any nails, but has grown back in the nails where it was still present. 130.71.96.19 16:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is a summary of this topic from a 2002 article in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy[3]:

Based on both its inhibitory and fungicidal action, tea tree oil may be a useful agent for treating dermatophyte infections. However, exactly how this in vitro activity translates into in vivo effectiveness is unclear.
[... summary of two clinical trials ...]
Given that onychomycosis rarely responds to topical therapy and is therefore usually treated systemically,20 it is perhaps not surprising that the topical application of tea tree oil was of limited effectiveness in these two clinical trials. This emphasizes the need for more clinical trial data, particularly in relation to tinea pedis, which can often be treated successfully topically.20

So it seems there is little-to-no evidence to support the claim either way. Furthermore, given topical treatments don't really work for onychomycosis, there are grounds for believing tea-tree oil won't work either. Pgr94 19:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Crocodile Oil

  • Crocodile Oil: There is something amazing in the crocodile’s immune system, there are strings of peptides that were only discovered very recently in the last eight or nine years and they are a powerful mechanism for fighting bacteria and fungal infections. Repcillin Crocodile Skin Balm is made in South Africa and uses the fat from CITES approved Crocodile farms in Africa.
Is this verifiable? WP:V Pgr94 22:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

This completely unverifiable: the only sources discussing Crocodile Oil are those selling it, usually trying to blind with pseudo-science. For more on this see the discussion for Crocodile Oil Almost-instinct (talk) 22:46, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wanted: images for each type of onychomycosis

There are different types of onychomycosis. It would be good to get images of each type. For example see [4] Pgr94 10:25, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

different types of onychomysosis will look mostly the same, be somewhat misleading (as for the most part, this is not a tool used to dignose the type of fungus... and may be somewhat trivial to categorize. Certainly additional photos of a general nature are always of value. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spamwatch (talk • contribs) 18:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vinegar passage removed.

As no evidence has been found for vinegar since Feb. 2007, I have removed it.

Distilled white vinegar.[citation needed] Drops are applied to the cuticle twice a day. This method does not kill the fungus, but the vinegar allegedly changes the pH (acid content) of the new nail formed in that 12-hour period. (The scientific perspective, however, is that vinegar is unlikely to penetrate the dense keratinous tissue thoroughly enough to have any significant effect. Instead, it may be absorbed by the skin above the nail and work its way to where the nail is actually forming.) As the old, infected nail grows and is cut away, it is said to be replaced by an acidic nail, uninhabitable by fungi. Several months of consistent application are involved.

Pgr94 (talk) 13:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fungus location

If someone with access to good sources could examine these issues and possibly amend the article it would be appreciated

  • The fungus "infects" the nail. Could this be clarified as to whether fungus is growing under and around the nail, or within the material of the nail itself?
  • Also the difficulty of treatment seems to be because of the difficulty of getting treating agent to the best location. Is drilling holes in the nail a workable option?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 20:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)