Do We Really Need To Take A Potent River-Blindness Pill -- For Head-Lice?

First -- for the sqeamish out there -- you may not want to read this -- while eating or drinking.

Next, as an institution, Merck -- to its eternal good credit -- deserves high praise for giving away nearly $4 billion worth of river-blindness drugs over the last three and a half decades. [I do wonder whether the below is some young Merck-i-fied MBA's junior dream project -- to make big money off Merck's earlier charitable discovery efforts.] So, now though, it seems that that same class of drugs has proven effective against the common head louse. And to be fair, some strains of head lice seem to be growing increasingly resistant to the OTC and prescription lotions.

Even so, an infestation of head lice is not a disease in any sense. It is not (absent many other highly unlikely confluences) ever going to be life-threatening. So, I think Daily Finance (do go read it all) gets it exactly right, when it asks whether this is akin to taking an elephant gun to hunt. . . a louse, thus:

. . . .The study, conducted in 812 infected people from 376 households in four countries, found that 95.2% of patients receiving the pill were lice-free on day 15, compared with 85% of those receiving malathion. . . .

[The] study. . . compared the common malathion-based treatment lotion against Stromectal -- a pill containing ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug made by Merck.

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was sponsored by Johnson & Johnson MSD Consumer Pharmaceuticals, a European joint venture of Merck and Johnson & Johnson. . . .

The question is whether a pill with side effects that include dizziness, nausea and sleepiness, and may even have more serious -- though rare -- side effects is necessary as a treatment for something that is a mild condition, not a disease. Only last month, the FDA approved another lotion for the treatment of head lice. Whether to request Stromectal is a question parents may have to answer depending on their child's individual case. . . .

It may take several applications over the course of three or four weeks, but the Old World approach -- of simply drowning the lice, by completely immersing the child's hair and scalp in a large, deep bowl filled to the brim with just slightly warmed (tepid) olive oil (and pressing the oil into the scalp, regularly and repeatedly over each half-hour application) will work. Yes, an experienced parent speaking here.

It is not as convenient as a lotion or pill -- and it requires that you get deeply involved in combing their hair out, afterwards, but it also keeps strong pharmaceutical grade chemicals out of a child's still developing system -- where the ill is truly -- a simple nuisance. Bonus: your kids will have wonderful "deep oil conditioning" hair-treatments, to boot. Make it like a mini spa-event, for them.

[For boys, especially if it is summer, and school is out -- shaving the hair clean off (followed by the olive oil treatment) is 100 percent effective, on the first try -- and the hair will grow back. . . in a few weeks.]

Later: I should also add that whether you use the meds, or the oils, you'll need to launder (hottest water settings) and then plastic-bag everything your child's head touched, and keep it out of circulation for about three weeks -- to be sure all the eggs have dried up and died.