“Recently, head lice belonging to different mitochondrial clades were found to carry the DNA of several bacterial body louse-borne pathogens, such as B. quintana, B. recurrentis, Acinetobacter species and Y. pestis in natural settings [14,16,20,33±38]. Experimental studies have also demonstrated that head lice may also act as a vector of louse-borne diseases” PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2018 Apr 17. See full article: "Body lice of homeless people reveal the presence of several emerging bacterial pathogens in northern Algeria." …
A Better Picture of Head-Lice Transmission, Aided by Math and a Fine-Toothed Comb
"As evidence mounts that head lice are developing resistance to widely used insecticides, the fight against lice is helped by a better understanding of how they spread—and how to stop them. Controlled studies of transmission of head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) in real-world settings aren’t exactly feasible, though, because the most accurate investigation would require somehow tracking the detailed movements of, say, a classroom full of children as well as the individual lice those children might be carrying. So, researchers must find different ways to get at the same kind of information." See full article at Entomology Today. …
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