3 ms·

Does this apply only to oral pharmaceutical antifungals? Or does it also apply to topical ones like clotrimazole for yeast, or food based oral antifungals like

• jessriedel 7y ago
  At least in the context of toenail fungus, the topical treatments avoid risk to your liver (but generally don't work because it's hard to penetrate the nail and nail bed). However, even assuming a carcinogenic role for fungus, topical treatments are very unlikely to be useful for preventing internal cancers like pancreatic cancer.
• gumby 7y ago
  Your dermis is designed to keep stuff out so though some of the topical will enter your system the amount is likely to be negligible (note: I am not a physician!!). Anyway topicals are used to treat fungi that attack dermal and nail tissue (e.g. tinia mentagrophytes or tinea pedis) so the whole point of using them is that you're applying the drug to the invader. This is why dandruff shampoo supposedly works. I wouldn't worry about eating garlic although I haven't seen any studies suggesting it might actually be efficacious. But it is delicious!
  • graeme 7y ago
    Thanks! That's what I figured about topicals. As for foods, I guess the question would have been better framed as IF a food has any antifungal effect, would it thus necessarily also stress the liver? Or is that merely a common property of anti-fungal meds so far, but not a property of things that kill fungus per se.