Scabies Pill may Help Kill Resistant Lice

Ivermectin, a pill prescribed for the skin disease known as scabies, also gets rid of hair lice that are resistant to conventional lotions, a study published on Thursday says.

Lice affects over 100 million people worldwide each year, especially children of primary school age, according to the paper, appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Scabies Outbreak Hits Elysee's Republican Guard
Three officers from the Elysee presidential palace's Republican Guard have fallen ill in an apparent outbreak of scabies, a disease usually linked to squalor, police officials said Wednesday.

The main treatments are diluted forms of an insecticide called permethrin and malathion, but since the 1990s lice have becoming more and more resistant to these chemicals.

That has left parents with little choice other than to be, literally, nit-pickers -- to go through their children's hair with a fine comb to haul out the parasites.

Ivermectin is a promising alternative, say French researchers who led the study.

The "Bush" Experience for Foreign Doctors in Australia
Bouncing on a trampoline at an Aboriginal camp in Australia's red centre, two-year-old Danae Moore faces a future filled with first and third world health problems, which an army of

They tested it in a trial involving 812 adults and children in 376 households in Britain, France, Ireland and Israel.

Half of the patients were treated with malathion and half with ivermectin, which was administered twice, seven days apart, at a dose of 400 microgrammes per kilo (2.2 pounds).

E. Coli Bacteria Migrating Between Humans, Chimps
Scientists have found that people employed in chimpanzee-focused research and tourism in a park in western Uganda are exchanging gastrointestinal bacteria – specifically E. coli.

After two weeks, 95.2 percent of the ivermectin group were lice-free, compared with 85 percent in the malathion group.

"Ivermectin is more effective than the best anti-lice lotion, but it should be reserved for difficult, resistant cases," the study's coordinator, Olivier Chosidow of France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), told AFP.

Efforts To Vanquish Skin Disease Among Infants
Residents and researchers in the Top End are fighting back against skin disease by targeting the prevention and treatment of scabies, tinea and skin sores in infants

Over-using the drug could make it succumb to resistance, following the same path as the lotions, he said.

Source-AFP
SAV