{"id":27336,"date":"2019-01-10T11:47:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T11:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.journals.cambridge.org\/?p=27336"},"modified":"2019-03-06T12:25:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T12:25:55","slug":"using-human-head-lice-to-unravel-neglect-and-cause-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2019\/01\/10\/using-human-head-lice-to-unravel-neglect-and-cause-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Using human head lice to unravel neglect and cause of death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Abandonment, neglect, sexual abuse, and even what triggers an individual\u2019s death can be unwrapped by just studying the biology and reproductive behaviour of human lice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Researchers from the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Pavia (Italy) have studied<\/a> head lice populations in severe and regular infestations.\u00a0 With access to data of hairs with head lice and especially nits, it is possible to estimate not only for how long a victim has been exposed to neglect, but also how frequently.\u00a0 Based on the analysis of a serious case of a victim of neglect who died shortly after being admitted to hospital, lice reproductive biology enabled the interpretation of the cause of death, and revealing for how long she was overdosing on medication.<\/p>\n

The victim had a very heavy head louse infestation.\u00a0 A number of hairs were analysed for the occurrence of nits.\u00a0 Female lice were also studied.\u00a0 All hairs were almost totally covered with groups of mainly 2 and 3 nits. \u00a0The overall distribution of grouped nits allowed an estimation of ca. 2 years of constant neglect or abandonment.\u00a0 In the distal (older) tip of hairs there were scattered groups of nits, suggesting repeated and early exposure to neglect, that culminated in the prolonged ~2 years massive infestation.\u00a0 Nits forming clusters is common in body lice, not in head lice, and the study revealed that head lice nits forming groups is a clear marker of neglect.\u00a0 In severe infestations, females run out of space to lay eggs, resulting in overlapping attachment sites<\/p>\n

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Head lice egg (bar 1mm)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Female head louse (approx. length 2.3 mm)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Male head louse (approx. length 2.2 mm)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what explained the cause of death were two clues only offered by head lice.\u00a0 One, there were no nits within 1.5 to 2cm of the proximal end of the hairs, near the scalp. \u00a0Because head lice lay eggs at 0.5cm of the scalp, this gap with no nits close to the scalp, despite the thousands of adults crawling on the head, was totally unexpected.\u00a0 Two, female lice had their embryos dying inside their bodies, and were unable to deliver any eggs.\u00a0 These two facts were indicative of something in the blood of the victim that was intoxicating both lice and victim.\u00a0 During the period of neglect, the elder was taking nifedipine \u2013 a medicine to control high blood pressure. The active compound of nifedipine is a powerful Calcium Channel Blocker (CCB), that in excess stops embryo development, in mammals as in insects.\u00a0 The medication stops lice reproduction if they feed on blood with high enough CCB doses.\u00a0 The hair\u2019s gap of nits 1.5 to 2 cm from the scalp suggests up to 2 months of overdosing of the medication, in other words, estimating the moment it started.<\/p>\n

Humans carry head, body and pubic lice; and the three can offer their biology to interpret what has happened to a victim in a number of circumstances.\u00a0 Pubic lice are unable to crawl on scalp hair, because these hairs are too thin.\u00a0 In children or toddlers, the only thick enough hairs available are the eyelashes and the eyebrows (no pubic hairs have grown yet). \u00a0For example, nits in eyebrows or eyelashes of toddlers or children mean sexual abuse, a serious crime that goes under-reported time and time again, because the nits of the three lice varieties look similar to the untrained eye.<\/p>\n

A single page form is included in the article<\/a>, to be used by practitioners, doctors, nurses, teachers and family members, to record lice infestations -this data can facilitate unravelling neglect, abandonment and abuse before it is too late.<\/p>\n

The paper\u00a0 \u2018Using human head lice to unravel neglect and cause of death<\/a>\u2019 , published in\u00a0\u00a0Parasitology<\/a>, is available free for one month.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abandonment, neglect, sexual abuse, and even what triggers an individual\u2019s death can be unwrapped by just studying the biology and reproductive behaviour of human lice. Researchers from the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Pavia (Italy) have studied head lice populations in severe and regular infestations.\u00a0 With access to data of hairs with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":796,"featured_media":27338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2255,19,1],"tags":[5271,5275,5276,5273,5269,5274,5270,5272,5278,5277,5268,3555,3860,342],"coauthors":[5279],"class_list":["post-27336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine-health-science","category-life-sciences","category-news","tag-abandonment","tag-abuse","tag-blood","tag-cause-of-death","tag-head-lice","tag-lice-infestation","tag-louse","tag-neglect","tag-nifedipine","tag-nit","tag-paper-of-the-month","tag-par","tag-par-potm","tag-parasitology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/796"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27336"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=27336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}