A dermatologist in Menlo Park, California, has developed a treatment for head lice that does not use toxic chemicals, and doesn’t require nit removal. In early studies, it proved as effective as standard insecticide lotions.

Nuvo lotion, as it’s called, is massaged into wet hair and scalp and then blown dry to form a shrink-wrapped, airtight invisible film that completely covers hair shafts and lice. The lice then suffocate.

“Lice have portholes on the side of their bodies, which they breathe through. If you plug up all those portholes, they die,” Dr. Dale Lawrence Pearlman, who developed the lotion, told Reuters Health.

The lotion is left on for at least eight hours and then is shampooed out. The process is repeated at one-week intervals for a total of three treatments.

In the medical journal Pediatrics, Pearlman notes that all of the ingredients in the lotion are “generally recognized as safe” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In two separate studies involving a total of 133 children with confirmed head lice infestation, the overall cure rate was 96 percent. These results are “comparable or superior” to results achieved with the standard neurotoxin-based head lice treatments - permethrin, pyrethrin, and Malathion - Pearlman emphasizes.

Lice are becoming increasingly resistant to standard insecticides and there is a need for new agents to treat the problem. “We are kind of in a war of poisons - we have to get tougher and tougher poisons because the bugs are mutating,” Pearlman said. “And while there is no evidence that children have been harmed by Malathion for head lice, a lot of parents are very worried and some pediatricians will not prescribe it.”

The two Nuvo trials showed there was no need for nit removal or extensive household cleaning. In one study, parents performed minimal household cleaning and removed the nits, while in the second trial they omitted these steps. There was no statistical difference between the two trials in cure rates, or in recurrences among the 113 participants followed for 6 months.

“We need to realize that kids don’t get head lice off of carpets or couches or stuffed animals; they get it from other kids,” Pearlman said.

Nuvo lotion is currently only available for research. Pearlman, who holds the patent on the lotion, told Reuters Health that he is “scrambling around to find a partner - a company, government agency, or foundation - to help with controlled studies, marketing, and regulatory actions.”

SOURCE: Pediatrics, September 2004.