If you believe that lice are the lot of declassed elements, and these unpleasant parasites can in no way be related to people who carefully monitor their hygiene, then any infectious disease specialist will easily refute this opinion. Pediculosis can affect even the most pedantic cleaners, since lice are very easily transmitted, and in cold weather they are activated, due to which the disease can occur quite unexpectedly.
Statistics say that every fifth of us - regardless of the country of residence or social level - at least once in his life had to deal with lice. These parasites have excellent survivability and endurance in an unfavorable environment, they prefer clean hair and healthy skin (where it is more convenient to stick and hatch), they quickly move by running and jumping - and therefore you can get infected with them even in an elevator or in a minibus, if a person happened to be nearby, unfortunate enough to become a carrier of parasites.
Where do lice come from
The spread of pediculosis is always facilitated by crowding of people, and we are talking not only about infection in kindergartens and schools in children's groups or nosocomial infections. It is quite possible to catch lice even in those places where you did not expect it at all - in a hairdresser, swimming pool, sauna, because the parasites will easily run over to your clean hair simply because they are nearby.
Lice are especially active in winter, because warm hats and other cozy things that protect the hair and body from the cold create a particularly favorable environment for parasites. Unfortunately, wars, epidemics, famine and mass disasters contribute to the spread of lice, during which it is difficult to maintain cleanliness.
Another actual reason for the spread of pediculosis, oddly enough, is our stress and anxiety, deep frustration and nervous breakdowns. Firstly, under these conditions, immunity is significantly weakened, and the body is not able to cope with external negative influences, becoming open to any infections. And secondly, the stressful state promotes the production of adrenaline and norepinephrine hormones, the special smell of which is especially attractive to insects, including lice. Lice (pediculosis) is caused by three types of parasites - head (Pediculus capitis), clothing or clothes (Pediculus corporis), pubic (Pediculus pubis) lice.
Head lice
Transmitted from person to person most often by direct contact or by sharing hairbrushes or hats.
The male has a size of 2-3 mm, the female - 2.4-4 mm, both of them are gray in color with black patches along the edge of the abdomen. Settling on the scalp, the female lays gray-white eggs (nits) 0.75-0.8 mm long, which, with the help of a chitinous membrane, freely cling to the hair. In some cases, head lice can parasitize on eyebrows, mustaches, and beards. The nits cling to the hair and look like white dots.
Clinic
Due to lice bites, intense itching of the skin occurs, which leads to the appearance of excoriations covered with hemorrhagic crusts. Often, through pyococcal infection, ostiofolliculitis, folliculitis, and impetigo vulgaris occur at the sites of injury. Abscesses and eczematous lesions may develop. When lice are complicated by pyoderma, the hair on the affected areas sticks together in thick bundles, the so-called "tangles", while regional lymph nodes can increase and become painful. In areas of the skin of the back of the head, especially in girls and women with long hair, the so-called "granular pyodermatitis" occurs. Lice is diagnosed based on the detection of parasites and nits on the scalp.
Pediculosis treatment
For the treatment of lice of the scalp, a 10% water-soap emulsion of benzyl benzoate is used, shampoos such as "Pedilin", "Nitiform", which are used to treat the skin and hair of the head for 10-15 minutes, after which they are washed with hot water and soap. In case of development of dermatitis or eczematization of acute inflammatory phenomena, they are eliminated with the help of indifferent lotions and lotions that contain corticosteroid preparations. It should be remembered that drugs against head lice are prohibited during pregnancy, breastfeeding and in children under the age of five. Absolutely all lice remedies are toxic and dangerous to the health of the fetus and child.
Don't think that head lice can go away by itself, and lice are just unpleasant, but harmless insects. Unfortunately, these parasites carry many dangerous infectious diseases. In addition, when combing lice bites, a person brings the products of their vital activity into the blood, which provokes many complications - from an allergic reaction to chronic dermatitis.
Source: estet-portal.com.
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