Mutant lice resistant to treatment

Fair warning – This story may make you itch.

After spending three weeks treating both of my girls for head lice, I thought I had the little buggers licked.

But it turns out, almost all lice in Washington State are now able to survive the over the counter pesticide treatment I’ve been using.

Dr. John Marshall Clark with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst gathered lice samples from the Seattle area and other cities around the country.

Not only are Washington lice resistant to Pyrethroids, but so are lice in most other states.

“The bottom line is that there’s actually very little susceptibility in the United States,” Dr. Clark recently told a meeting of the American Chemistry Society.

The good news is there are three alternative treatments. They’re only available by prescription, and because they’re relatively new they can still be somewhat expensive. And, your school nurse might not even know they’re an option.

Dr. Clark and his partner recently attended a meeting of the National Association of School Nurses to present their research. They were shocked by the response.

“Cause they’re really the on the ground people that see the lice infestations, and it was surprising to us that they had been, really, not informed that this information even existed,” said Clark.

Dr. Clark has created an education campaign. So, as your kids head back to school, hopefully their school nurse will be armed with this new information. If not, you can ask your doctor about getting a prescription.

As for the possibility that lice might end up developing an immunity to these new treatments, Dr. Clark says that’s highly unlikely. With three new treatments released at about the same time, it would be very difficult for the bugs to mutate in a way that would resist all of them.