Last week, thousands of children returned from the holiday resort to their towns to start the school year. For a few days, many children (several studies report two out of ten children) will be accompanied by travel mates pestering both children and their parents: pediculus capitis, commonly known as head lice.
The reason for infestation is very simple: beaches are the perfect place for children to get infested because these parasites (or their eggs, called nits) can survive up to ten days without human contact (i.e. without blood) thanks to heat and humidity of the sand, which are suitable for survival. Agustín Buendía Eisman, professor and researcher of the Dermatology area at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de Granada, reports that because of direct contact between children and beach sand, many children return home with nits in their hair.
“Girls contract head lice more often than boys”, explains professor Buendía. “There is a very simple reason: girls’ hair is usually long. Girls comb each other and exchange hair accessories such as combs and hair pins”.
Unlike head lice, which feed on human blood and cannot survive 24 hours without it (i.e. without the human body), nits can survive up to ten days in beach sand, from where they spread to children heads.
The UGR researcher explains that nits are “easier to see” than head lice. Nits are oval and often located in the hair behind ears or near the neck. In addition, they can be easily distinguished from dandruff, which can be combed out of the hair, while nits cannot.
Simple treatment
“However, there is no reason to get alarmed by the increasing number of children having head lice that is expected in the following weeks,” explains Buendía Eisman. “Treatment against head lice is very simple and effective”. It is advisable to use shampoo for head lice as a preventive measure, but in fact “there isn’t any 100% effective treatment to eliminate the risk of getting infested”.
The professor of the UGR underlines the fact that at this time of the year more cases of children having head lice are recorded because of the population flows from the beach into the cities after summer holidays. Regarding the risk of getting head lice, Buendía Eisman recommends asking the dermatologist about the “correct and definitive treatments”, since using wrong treatments might eliminate symptoms such as itching, but they don’t solve the problem. Moreover, they can prolong it and can trigger an epidemiological chain. “Home-made remedies such applying oily substances to the child’s hair (petroleum jelly, mayonnaise, olive oil) or the use of “special nit combs” are useful to eliminate nits, but they don’t kill the parasite”.
Lotions and shampoos containing new-generation pediculicides are the main effective treatment, so long as they are recommended and controlled by the dermatologist.
Reference:
Prof. Agustín Buendía Eisman. Dermatology Area, Department of Medicine of the Universidad de Granada.
Phone: 958 243300 – 958 249012.
E-mail: abuendia@ugr.es
