14 DAY TRIAL // A group of experts from the Henri Mondor Hospital and the Avicenne Hospital (HP), working together with colleagues from Inserm, have recently proven the effectiveness of a new molecule in combating lice. While mostly eradicated in civilized countries, where people care a lot about their personal hygiene, the problem still persists in the Third World, and therefore handling it is very important. The new work was also prompted by the fact that increasingly often, the average lice becomes resistant to existing treatments aimed at eradicating it, e! Science News reports.
The new therapeutic alternative consists of oral tablets, which are apparently highly effective in no less than 95 percent of all cases. Details of how they function appear in the March 11 issue of the highly-regard scientific publication The New England Journal of Medicine. It is estimated that the new drug could become extremely useful for the over 100 million people who contract the creatures annually. The parasites are most often transmitted among children aged 3 to 11, because this is the time when their social activities – including games in the park – imply the largest amount of physical interaction.
Existing lice therapies at this point are efficient in many cases. However, the lotions appear to have started to fail more often lately, and researchers are worried that lice species immune to our chemicals may develop. Most of the current lotions feature malathion and pyrethrin, two very common insecticides. But resistant lice that experts had a chance to analyze exhibited specific mutations which allowed them to endure the chemicals' effects. As such, lice epidemics become increasingly common, and also very difficult to eradicate. Many science groups have been looking for a way to stop their spread, and not many were successful.
In the new experiments, which featured 812 individuals from 376 families, the new substance was tested against a lotion containing 0.5% malathion lotion. The products were applied twice, seven days apart, by test groups. Some 95 percent of people who were treated with Ivermectin were lice-free after 15 days, whereas only 85 percent of those treated with the other substance had gotten rid of their parasites. “When conventional treatments against lice do not work, taking Ivermectin twice, with a seven-day interval, offers excellent results and represents a real alternative to conventional anti-lice lotions,” explains the coordinator of the new study, Olivier Chosidow.