Barbara Glickstein's, (Public health nurse and Cofounder and Director of the Center for Health Media and Policy at Hunter College, City University of New York) interview with NPA's President Deborah Z Altschuler. The Barbara Glickstein podcast segments are part of an educational outreach project produced by Dan Gingold and Zach Kuperstein with LaShawn McGhee as editor. Podcast of Barbara Glickstein Interview (part 1) - (114MB)Podcast of Barbara Glickstein Interview (part 2) - (58MB)Download the 25th Anniversary Podcast! - Choose Podcast MP3 or Podcast iTunes …
Activists in Public Health
By Deborah Z. Altschuler "With the exception of an occasional accolade for all the hard work that goes into being an activist, I generally find myself resenting the term." To paraphrase an old proverb, Citizen Activists will never disappoint you if you observe two rules: 1. Find out what they are; 2. Expect them to be just that. Many of us come naturally to advocacy in our role as parents. The activist in public health, however, can face a peculiar set of problems. Regarding Pediculosis, the consensus among contemporary physicians is that head lice are essentially a nuisance, leaving treatment protocols to the pharmaceutical manufacturers who market pediculicides for direct application to human skin. Although it can be a positive force, the pharmaceutical industry is not a proper …
Brill-Zinsser Disease in a Patient Following Infection with Sylvatic Epidemic Typhus Associated with Flying Squirrels
Brill-Zinsser disease is a form of recrudescent epidemic typhus that occurs years or decades after primary typhus infection [1–4]. However, in the United States, improved sanitation and hygiene measures have largely eliminated the human body louse vector and epidemic typhus as public health concerns [1]. In addition, the availability of tetracycline-class antibiotics to effectively treat rickettsial infections has reduced the severity and duration of infections [1, 4].Although the classic louseborne cycle of Rickettsia prowazekii is not common in the United States, R. prowazekii infections are still sporadically reported. There have been at least 47 cases documented in humans since 1976 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unpublished data) [5, 6]. Most of these cases had reported …
Classic Articles Prior to 2010
The NPA has been helping people around the world since long before there was an Internet. This section features some of the timeless articles and editorials that appeared in peer review journals, newspapers and from the NPA's own publications. Please note that many of these resources will open as pdfs and other document types and some may open not yet formatted for our relaunched website. Return to complete listing of classic articles. 2010The Lindane Project: A Petition to the United States GovernmentLindane is a persistent bioaccumulative toxic (PBT) chemical to which the US population continues to be exposed to and at risk from the past and current use via the ambient air, water, soil, food, manufacturing, Superfund sites, stockpiles, recycled plastic and the …
Genome sequences of the human body louse and its primary endosymbiont provide insights into the permanent parasitic lifestyle
As an obligatory parasite of humans, the body louse (Pediculus humanus humanus) is an important vector for human diseases, including epidemic typhus, relapsing fever, and trench fever. Here, we present genome sequences of the body louse and its primary bacterial endosymbiont Candidatus Riesia pediculicola. The body louse has the smallest known insect genome, spanning 108 Mb. Despite its status as an obligate parasite, it retains a remarkably complete basal insect repertoire of 10,773 protein-coding genes and 57 microRNAs. Representing hemimetabolous insects, the genome of the body louse thus provides a reference for studies of holometabolous insects. Compared with other insect genomes, the body louse genome contains significantly fewer genes associated with environmental sensing and …
New Studies Validate Old Wisdom
By Deborah Z. Altschuler “They use combing to validate an active infestation, quantify lice and nits by counting what the comb removes from their test subjects, as well as confirm and compare therapeutic efficacy.” The March 11, 2010 New England Journal of Medicine published a study comparing the use of a pesticide called malathion to the use of an oral antibiotic called ivermectin to determine the efficacy of each in treating children with head lice (pediculosis). http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/362/10/896 According to this report, head lice are universal human parasites affecting over 100 million people worldwide each year. The study was conducted on children who had already been treated with topical insecticides yet continued to have live lice. “Infestation was …
The Lindane Project
The Lindane Project is a petition to the United States Government to cancel lindane’s registration as a pharmaceutical as it has been cancelled by the EPA for all other uses. THAT this compilation of government surveillance documents the presence and persistence of the pesticide lindane and its related isomers in the United States. THAT the world via the Stockholm Convention has voted to take proactive measure to protect the citizens of the world from lindane and related isomers while the U.S. did not ratify the Convention but asked and received exception to allow lindane to be directly applied to humans as a pharmaceutical. THAT lindane was banned by the US Secretary of the Interior in 1970 for use as a pesticide on lands managed by …
Genotyping of Human Lice Suggests Multiple Emergences of Body Lice from Local Head Louse Populations
Genetic analyses of human lice have shown that the current taxonomic classification of head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) and body lice (Pediculus humanus humanus) does not reflect their phylogenetic organization. Three phylotypes of head lice A, B and C exist but body lice have been observed only in phylotype A. Head and body lice have different behaviours and only the latter have been involved in outbreaks of infectious diseases including epidemic typhus, trench fever and louse borne recurrent fever. Recent studies suggest that body lice arose several times from head louse populations...We propose a hypothesis for the emergence of body lice, and suggest that humans with both low hygiene and head louse infestations provide an opportunity for head louse variants, able to ingest a larger …