It’s not something out of the ordinary to catch lice at school. Kids like to play, run and be together, which creates a great environment to catch lice. When my siblings were younger my brother came home with lice and soon the whole family had lice. That’s how quickly it can spread and back then it only took lice shampoo and the combing our hair to remove the little critters from our heads, but now there’s a strain of mutant lice that is making things a little more complicated.
These mutant lice are resistant to common treatments or shampoos found over the counter. According to Kyong Sup Yoon, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Souther Illinois University, his team collected lice samples from across 30 states in the U.S. They discovered that 104 out of 109 lice populations had high levels of gene mutations, which makes them resistant to pyrethroids.
Pyrethroids are insecticides that include permethrin, the active ingredient in head lice treatments found in drug stores. This poses a big problem because there’s a good chance these treatments won’t work.
This is bound to happen because just like any other living organism, when a product is widely available and even overused, it creates a drug resistance. This creates a problem for those that are embarrassed by the situation because you may have to go to your doctor and get a lice treatment with permethrin, which is only given with a prescription.
