Wednesday, September 29, 1999
Anti-lice ammo
New products help parents, nurses keep kids' heads clean
BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Out here on the front lines of pest control, Beverly Klitz feels fairly well armed. In one hand is her trusty LiceMeister comb. In the other, samples of lice shampoo.
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ABOUT HEAD LICE
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• What they are: Tiny parasite insects found on the heads of people (not pets). A louse is about as big as a sesame seed, has six legs and is tan/gray/whitish. Females lay eggs, or nits, that stick to individual hair shafts. They are oval and usually yellow-white. Nits hatch in about a week; adults can live up to 30 days on a person's head.
• How they live: Adult lice feed on blood through the scalp.
• Symptoms: A ticklish feeling of something moving in the hair; itching (caused by allergic reaction to scalp bites); irritability; sores on the head from scratching/infection.
• How they spread: From one person to another, usually children 3-12, through direct contact or sharing items such as hats, scarves, coats, sports uniforms, hair ribbons, combs, brushes, towels, pillows, bed linens, furniture or stuffed animals that had recent contact with an infested person. To prevent lice, discourage children from sharing these items.
• Who gets them: Children ages 3-12 of all socioeconomic backgrounds and neighborhoods are at risk, as are their families. Lice are more common in girls than boys. African-Americans rarely get head lice.
• How to eradicate head lice at home
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As soon as head lice start creeping and crawling into the hair and scalps of Tristate school children — and they will, in every district regardless of neighborhood — she and other school nurses will be ready.
“There's always one or two cases at the beginning of the year, but it will start picking up as we get into cooler weather and kids start wearing hats and things like that,” says Mrs. Klitz, school nurse at Sycamore Junior High in Montgomery. “We never have a down time.”
This year, at least, parents, nurses and public health officials have a few new weapons in their arsenal against these tiny little parasites that feed on human scalps and lay their pesky eggs, called nits, on hair shafts. An estimated 12 million children and families deal with lice infestations each year. By some guesses, $100 million to $160 million was spent on anti-lice products in 1998.
Of special concern the last several years have been cases of seemingly “resistant” strains of lice that don't die when attacked with shampoos and prescription products. In some cases, parents are turning to home remedies like Vaseline, mayonnaise and olive oil rubbed into a child's hair for eight hours to smother lice (they work, but Vaseline can be especially difficult to remove).
“We're seeing a lot of frustrated parents, lots of frustrated physicians and lots of frustrated school nurses,” says Sue Partridge, spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control's Division of Parasitic Diseases.
The new arsenal
Researchers aren't sure how much of the problem is linked to resistant lice and how much is the result of parents who don't follow the strict procedures required over several weeks to kill all the lice and to remove all the nits in a child's scalp.
The marketplace is responding, and among the new products:
• LiceMeister comb, a favorite of Mrs. Klitz, which combs out lice and nits. “It takes a long time to sit and comb,” she says. “LiceMeister looks like a hair pick, but the tines are very, very close together. It will get nits and everything out.” It costs about $15 at drug stores.
• AllNatural HairClean 1-2-3 Lice Remover, new from Quantum Health, a West Coast supplement company. HairClean 1-2-3 is FDA-approved for lice and nit removal. The bottle of lice remover contains natural oils — coconut, anise and ylang ylang — to coat hair shafts and make them slick. The lice comb is then used to remove lice and nits. The product has a sweet candy smell because of the licorice-like anise oil and coconut oil. Suggested price is $16.99 for one ounce (two treatments) or $24.99 for two ounces (four treatments). Call (877) 542-3877.
• LiceGuard Head Lice Repellent and LiceGuard Egg Removal Shampoo from ARR Health Technologies, which also makes the electronic RobiComb for locating and zapping lice. The repellent is sprayed onto a child's hair each morning, and its active ingredient (CL-1) is a combination of fragrances and oils that, in overseas and U.S. studies, had a 95 percent success rate at preventing lice infestation. It's about $15 for a one-ounce bottle (lasts about two months).
LiceGuard's shampoo, used when lice are found, contains lactic acid, which loosens the gluey bond between nits and hair shafts and allowing the nits to be combed out easily. The shampoo is $12.99 for a 3.4-ounce bottle.
Rich Brudnick, ARR president, says the new products give parents greater and less toxic alternatives for treating lice.
“With most U.S. schools adopting a "no-nit' policy — meaning that children found to have nits in their hair are not permitted to stay in school— the burden is on parents to be extremely vigilant,” he says.
What nurses know
Lice live only on humans, making laboratory studies of the problem impossible, and leaving parents, nurses and health-care professionals to learn from experience while they experiment with new approaches.
Mrs. Klitz says last year's product, an electronic comb called RobiComb, hasn't turned out to be as effective as hoped.
"It's too expensive to use as a screening device,” she says. “Some schools have used it that way, cleaning it between each child. The biggest complaint that I've gotten is that, like a bug zapper, it only zaps when it hits a bug. It's distracting, especially for the smaller children. They don't like that sound, knowing there's a bug in their hair. Even the older kids didn't like that sound of being zapped.”
Another drawback: RobiComb won't kill nits, so parents still have to use nit combs or remove each individually by hand.
And despite all the new products, the arduous task of removing all the nits by hand, experts say, is the key to halting a lice infestation and re-infestation.
“It's a lot of work for parents to deal with,” says Deborah Altschuler of the National Pediculosis Association, based in Massachusetts (pediculosis is the official term for head lice infestation). “People comb their hair every day anyway. That's where we want people to start.”
Cox News Service and The New York Times News Service contributed to this report.
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