Many parents try to battle head lice without success, are frustrated with the thought of even dealing the insects, and
feel ill-equipped.

Is it any wonder they battle without success? The nit removal tools they purchase are basically useless, they are given
out-dated information, and they are dealing with Superlice - Impervious to chemicals.

Please see this fascinating article.

The National Post
Wednesday, September 15, 1999

'Super Lice' have Teachers
scratching their heads

Impervious to Chemicals

by Diane Lore

ATLANTA - Atlanta mother Randy Foster had done all the typical things to get rid of head lice in her daughter's hair. She bought the chemical cream rinses, vacuumed the carpets, bagged the toys, and picked out the eggs, known as nits, with a metal comb. None of it worked.
Edit: terrible advice sentence.

"Nobody warned me about how hard it was going to be to get rid of them, " Foster said. "No one told us how this was going to turn our lives upside down."

Foster said she believes her daughter Chelsea, may have been infested with lice that had developed resistance to typical chemical treatments - a trend that may afflict scores of families and schools, experts say. Although scientists are unable to say how widespread the problem of "super lice" may be, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta acknowledge that they are seeing significant anecodal evidence of tougher bugs.

"We're seeing alot of frustrated parents, lots of frustrated physicans and lots of frustrated school nurses," said Sue Partridge, spokesperson for the CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases.

Lice outbreaks - whether due to "super lice" or just wide-spread, inconsistent follow-up care, are now "a major concern for school nurses," Partridge said.
At Westchester Elementary School in Altanta, principal Cheryl Kuebler, fondly known to faculty and students as the Lice Lady, is more prepared than most. A few months ago, her school struggled with a near epidemic of lice.

"I learned alot, and I became very pro-active," she said. Now Kuebler recommends such family activities as Friday night lice checks
(important- KT), writes articles about lice for the school newsletter, and personally does class checks. The good news is the school has not seen any more widespread outbreaks - "knock on wood", she said. But many schools- and parents- will not be so lucky.

A further complication is that the lice treatment can be expensive. A family can easily rack up $60 to $70 bill (all figures in U.S. dollars) to treat a single lice infestation.
Chemical cream rinses, which need to be used twice within one week,
(not true-KT) cost between $10 and $20 a pop per person. And a fine toothed comb costs between $10 and $15.

But the greatest hurdle to combatting lice in the past decade has been that more and more parents are finding that typical treatments - such as Nix- don't seem to be working anymore.

A new Harvard University study found more than 200 lice, harvested from the heads of 57 children survived in Petri dishes treated with permethrin. In contrast, the researchers showed that 67 lice from children in the Philippines, who use chemical treatments far less frequently, quickly died after exposure of permethrin, expect one, which apparently escaped.

In fact, the study found that if a little permethrin didn't kill the lice, neither did higher doses. "If you have head lice and an over-the -counter medication containing permethrin doesn't solve the problem, then neither will a prescription for a higher dose of permethrin," said Dr. Richard Pollack, the study's lead author.

Cox News Service,
with files from Reuters

Summary of Harvard Study:
1% Permethrin such as Nix® rarely works, and - neither will the 5% concentration of Permethrin

Karen Tilley
UkuBusters.com Help Line: 808-821-8008