BACKGROUND Pediculosis (head lice) is considered as one of the most common health problems of the students in primary schools. The purpose of this study was to survey the prevalence rate of the infestation in the schools of Gonabad City (south of Khorasan-e-Razavi Province) to prevent its outbreak by on-time planning. METHODS In this retrospective-descriptive study, data were collected from t...

Scabies and pediculosis are ubiquitous, contagious, and debilitating parasitic dermatoses. The tendency of high prevalence of pediculosis and scabies among school and preschool age children has prompted us to conduct a head louse and scabies prevalence survey among preschool nursery children in our district. A school-based, crosssectional study was performed, with 1,134 children chosen for eval...

Human head lice and body lice are morphologically and biologically similar but have distinct ecologies. They were shown to have almost the same basic genetic content (one gene is absent in head lice), but differentially express certain genes, presumably responsible for the vector competence. They are now believed to be ecotypes of the same species (Pediculus humanus) and based on mitochondrial ...

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Blood-sucking lice of humans have extensively fragmented mitochondrial (mt) genomes. Human head louse and body louse have their 37 mt genes on 20 minichromosomes. In human pubic louse, the 34 mt genes known are on 14 minichromosomes. To understand the process of mt genome fragmentation in the blood-sucking lice of mammals, we sequenced the mt genomes of the domestic pig louse, Haematopinus suis...

Basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins comprise a large superfamily of transcription factors, which are involved in the regulation of various developmental processes. bHLH family members are widely distributed in various eukaryotes including yeast, fruit fly, zebrafish, mouse, and human. In this study, we identified 55 bHLH motifs encoded in genome sequence of the human body louse, Pediculus hu...

Essential oils of aniseed, cinnamon leaf, red thyme, tea tree, peppermint, nutmeg, rosemary, and pine were tested in vitro against lice, Pediculus humanus. All the oils except for rosemary and pine were found to be effective in the laboratory when applied in an alcoholic solution and followed by a rinse the following morning in an essential oil/vinegar/water mixture. Peppermint and nutmeg were ...

The mitochondrial (mt) genomes of animals typically consist of a single circular chromosome that is approximately 16-kb long and has 37 genes. Our analyses of the sequence reads from the Human Body Louse Genome Project and the patterns of gel electrophoresis and Southern hybridization revealed a novel type of mt genome in the sucking louse, Pediculus humanus. Instead of having all mt genes on a...

In reviewing the current extent and epidemiology of louse infestations in human populations and between host and another, it is accepted that is infested by two species of lice/ of which consists of two subspecies (Busvine, 1976). The two species Pthirus pubis, the crab louse, andiPediculus humanus, the human louse, the latter with its two subspecies, P. h. capitis, the head louse, and P. h. hu...

Received: December 2011, Accepted: September 2012 Background: Head lice infestation is one of the most common parasitic infections with a long history in the world. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of head lice infestation among 3-6 years old children going to nursery schools in Kashan, Iran in 2009. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 120...