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illnesses and conditions

Nits

They may be tiny, only the size of a sesame seed, but head lice are the cause of huge amounts of anguish and furious argument.

They cannot fly, but are highly mobile and contagious, passed on by direct head to head contact.

They live on, or very close to the scalp in which they jab their needle-like mouth to drink the blood.

They only live on humans and cannot be caught from animals.

Nits are the empty, pearly white egg cases laid by the lice which stick firmly to the hair shaft.

Unlike dandruff they cannot be brushed away.

If you don't have moving insects on your scalp, you don't have head lice.

Lice have been around for generations but still the problem remains of how to get rid of them effectively and the debate now is if wet combing is an effective alternative to chemical lotions.

Wet combing or ''bug busting'' is an intensive procedure whereby the infected hair is washed and condition then combed through with a very fine nit comb to remove the lice.

It is laborious and has to be done with patience and care three times a week to be effective.

It is an approach favoured by many nurses and health professionals.

In Manchester the stated policy is only to prescribe chemical lotions to kill head lice ''as a last resort and only if wet combing has failed.''

But that stand infuriates others like DR John Aston, consultant on communicable disease control in Wigan and Bolton and a government adviser on head lice.

He said: ''There is absolutely no scientific proof that wet combing clears a lice infection.

''It can detect lice, but so can dry combing, and I strongly believe that the only way to rid a head of lice is to use insecticidal lotion.

''Used in the quantity according to the instructions it will kill the lice and stop the spread in the community. Nothing else will.''

Researchers at the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine have now been given a grant to compare the effectiveness of bug busting against insecticidal lotions.

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