RESEARCH ARTICLE
Indirect Transmission of Head Lice via Inanimate Objects
Deon V. Canyon*, Rick Speare
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 72
Last Page: 76
Publisher ID: TODJ-4-72
DOI: 10.2174/1874372201004010072
Article History:
Received Date: 05/04/2010Revision Received Date: 18/05/2010
Acceptance Date: 18/05/2010
Electronic publication date: 14/7/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Whether people can become infected by head lice transferring from inanimate objects is a topic of controversy. This paper reviews the evidence available from experimental studies in controlled laboratory experiments and data from field studies. The weight of evidence appears to be against transmission from inanimate objects being significant, and the promotion of inanimate objects that play an epidemiologically important role in head lice dispersal is not supported by evidence. We conclude that the control of head lice should focus on the head, not on the environment. However, additional studies are needed to quantify transmission risk via inanimate objects and the probability that head lice eggs survive and hatch off-host.