They are a last resort for desperate parents. They are the ones to call when noxious lice shampoos, lye and fine-toothed combs do not solve the problem.
Professor Dale Clayton and his lab team have created a machine that can cure 100 percent of all human head-lice cases-a product Clayton said he titled and trademarked "LouseBuster."
"The people we cure had lice for years and can't get rid of it. We treat the very serious cases," said Joe Atkin, a double major in English and biology who coordinates field-testing for Clayton's lab.
Clayton "accidentally" got his idea for the product when he moved to Utah about five years ago. He was trying to keep lice alive for an experiment on birds and bird lice. Utah's environment was too dry to keep them alive, and many of the lice kept dying.
"It was kind of an upsetting accident," Clayton said.
But it was an accident that helped Clayton get his idea for the device that works by blowing hot air on the lice and their eggs.
At first the lab started with a regular blow dryer, but that only killed about 8 percent of the head lice. They then played around with the temperature and intensity of the air that the device emits.
Now the product looks like a shop vacuum with a giant toothcomb on the end of it. The machine is fitted with foam insulation because some of the young children are scared by the loud noise.
In an effort to test the effectiveness of the machine, Clayton and his lab workers visited 307 different families with severe lice outbreaks.
When the researchers first arrived at a home, they would part the child's hair in half and count the number of live lice and lice eggs on one half of the person's head. They would then treat the child's entire head with the device. When finished, they would comb the other half of the child's hair for lice and eggs. They placed the eggs in an incubator at the lab and watched them for two weeks to see if any would hatch.
The product killed only about 82 percent of lice, but Clayton thinks it may damage the lice enough so they won't be able to reproduce-thereby curing the child of the lice. The Clayton lab has had many positive experiences with the device, and several hand-printed notes hung around the lab-many of which are thank-yous from children who have been cured of their lice.
ccallister@chronicle.utah.edu
