In The News - ‘Super lice’ leave parents scratching their heads

I saw the article "‘Super lice’ leave parents scratching their heads" on MSNBC and it got me thinking. Especially now that school has started, I can see how kids in daycare can easily contract lice during the school year (even infants) since there are school-age children who go to daycare in the morning before school and in the afternoon when school is finished. Not to mention the close quarters that the kids are in for the day.

So, what are lice? According to KidsHealth.org, The bane of many parents, the head louse is a tiny, wingless parasitic insect that lives among human hairs and feeds on extremely small amounts of blood drawn from the scalp. Although they may sound gross, lice (the plural of louse) are a very common problem, especially for kids ages 3 years to 12 years (girls more often than boys). There is also a good informational page here.

How are they spread? According to HeadLice.org, Head lice can be spread whenever there is direct contact of the head or hair with an infested individual. Lice can also be spread through the sharing of personal articles like hats, towels, brushes, helmets, hair ties, etc. There is also a possibility of spreading head lice via a pillow, headrest or similar items. Head lice do not jump or fly and generally cannot survive longer than 24 hours off the host.

What are the treatment options? According to KidsHealth.org, Your doctor can recommend a medicated shampoo, cream, or lotion to kill the lice. These may be over-the-counter or prescription medications, depending on what treatments have already been tried. It isn't uncommon for treatments to be unsuccessful because of incorrect use or because the lice may be resistant to the chemical in the shampoo.

It's important to follow the directions exactly because these products are insecticides. Applying them too much or too frequently can increase the risk of causing harm. Following the directions on the product label is also important to ensure that the treatment works properly. Your doctor may also suggest a special rinse to use on your child's hair that makes it easier to comb out the nits using a fine-tooth comb.

According to the MSNBC article, over the counter medications for head lice often times are not enough to wipe the little suckers out. Researchers have been warning for years that head lice in the U.S. and around the world are developing immunity to the strong insecticides used in over-the-counter and prescription shampoos. It takes just three to five years for the bugs to adapt to a new product, despite claims to the contrary by the manufacturers, noted Shirley C. Gordon, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University who studies persistent head lice.

Health officials have continued to recommend the products, however, because over-the-counter medications like the permethrin in Nix, the pyrethrin s in RID, the lindane in Kwell and the prescription malathion in Ovide still work in some people, some of the time.

Ovide, a malathion lotion, is the only treatment that consistently continues to kill lice in the U.S., even though the bugs have become largely resistant elsewhere in the world, said Terri L. Meinking, a longtime University of Miami lice expert who now runs a private research company. Until more effective treatments are found, parents will continue to be forced to experiment with available medications and to resort to old-fashioned treatments such as removing nits with a fine-toothed comb.

I don't think I've ever had lice but just the thought of bugs crawling on my head creeps me the heck out. And the fact that lice are most prevalent in daycare and schools kind of scares me. And although health officials still recommend the over the counter stuff, school nurses are hoping that potential new solutions — from faster-acting, more effective insecticides to gels that smother the lice to hot air treatments that desiccate them — will come to the rescue. And the sooner the better.

According to HeadLice.org, manual removal is the best option whenever possible, especially when treatment products have failed and they specifically recommend the LiceMeister Comb to get the job done. Wetting the hair beforehand is recommended because it temporarily immobilizes the lice and they become easier to comb out.

You may be wondering how prevalent lice actually is in the US. According to the MSNBC article, Exactly how common the critters have become is a subject of much debate. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 6 million and 12 million children aged 3 to 11 are infested each year. In a letter in this month’s edition of the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers in Greece summarized studies on the prevalence of head lice around the world, reporting that it ranged from 1.6 percent in schoolchildren in the United States to 30 percent of kids in Turkey and nearly 60 percent among those in Egypt.

However, those figures are questionable at best, said Richard J. Pollack, a public health entomologist at the Harvard School of Public Health who has studied lice for decades. By his calculations, about 1 percent of kids actually are infested at any single moment in time, which would amount to about 400,000 cases in the U.S. each year.



Hopefully they will come up with something soon that can definitively get rid of lice once it's encountered. If you happen to encounter a problem with head lice, I wish you luck. And remember, homes don't get head lice, people do.