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Head lice are a big problem, affecting 6 to 12 million people in the US every year. Head lice are becoming endemic amongst our children. Unfortunately the pharmacological treatments for head lice are not that great. Malathion (Ovide) is an organophosphate that kills lice by inhibiting the cholinesterase enzyme.
Malathion works well for lice, unfortunately it has the side effect of being highly flammable, so little children should stay away from fires, to keep their heads from catching on fire.
The most commonly used prescribed medication for these problems is lindane (Kwell). Doctors apparently have not figured out yet that it doesn’t work and has been associated with some potential safety concerns. Efficacy of lindane has been decreasing over the past few decades to lindane due to the emergence of treatment resistant lice. Lindane has limited efficacy, killing only 17% of lice after a 3 hour period, and none after 10 minutes, the recommended time of exposure.
In other words, take Lindane as directed, and it will do NOTHING!
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Great choice, catch on fire on pay for something that does nothing. I like your blog. Cool niche.
So what should people do to fight lice? I teach 8th grade and student told me today that she found a louse on herself on the bus trip to Marine World. She thought it came from the bus. Then she told me that when she came back to school about 10 days ago it was back from fighting lice for 3 weeks. She was told to treat the lice “chemically” then use a comb with fine tines and comb out and kill all the lice remaining in her hair which she did many times until she thought they were licked. By the way, I think that the louse came on the filed trip with her and was not already on the bus. Now my head is itching. (nothing is there that I can see, but thinking about it is making my head itch). So I thought…what on Earth do I do if I were to catch lice at school?
Probably malathion (Ovide) since Kwell is useless. Just keep the kiddies away from flames. And you have to treat twice, once for the lice and again later for the eggs. Using a comb is probably a waste of time. You can see them if you look up real close, they move around.