Efficacy of herbal shampoos against head lice

 A new study has analysed a range of herbal shampoos for their ability to kill head lice.

The study by Watcharawit and Soonwera, published in the March 2014 edition of Tropical Biomedicine, tested twenty-nine commercially available herbal shampoos against malathion shampoo on a sample of head lice collected from Thai school children.

Shampoo formulations from zingiberaceae, piperaceae and native Thai plants were tested against lice samples vai immersion testing for lice mortality.

The study reports that all herbal shampoos showed total lice mortality after 60 seconds, with Zingiber cassumunar being the fastest-acting.

The authors recommend further testing of the active ingredients in the shampoo formulations.

This study follows on from previous work published in 2013 in Parasitology Research.