Super doomer fodder: mutant head lice

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Ananova: Hair wigwams 'will tackle mutant head lice'

Scientists in Boston are hoping to control mutant strains of human head lice by creating insect colonies on wigwam-shaped tufts of hair.

Professor John Clark and Kyong Yoon say the technique could also help experts assess the possible role of head lice in a bio-terrorist attack.

Scientists warn mutant lice are on the rise in the US and are becoming resistant to common treatments.

The University of Massachusetts researchers claim they're the first to devise and artificial feeding system to breed mutant lice for laboratory tests.

They've set up a membrane to act as a scalp and an automatic blood feeding system which allows the insects to be reared on tufts of hair.

Professor Clark said: "We just cut the little tufts and make wigwams out of them and the head lice kind of think they're on a scalp and wander down and take a blood meal, then go back up."

The most common ingredient in head lice treatment is an insecticide derived from chrysanthemum flowers called permethrin.

In a small-scale studies the researchers found the number of mutated lice resistant to permerthrin ranged from 50% in Los Angeles children to 98% in a migrant workers' camp in Florida.

Professor Clark said: "We don't have an effective control process out there. That means they're becoming harder to control and the chances of increased infestation are certainly higher. If you had 8% of children with open head wounds caused by feeding lice, and someone dumps a lot of cutaneous anthrax [in a bio-terrorist attack], there's a real chance these kids can be at high risk for infection."

Creating 'lice farms' in a laboratory will allow scientists to monitor the mutations and study the chemical and biological reactions of insects.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2002


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