It’s a bird, a plane ... it’s Super Lice in your kid’s hair

Say the words “super lice” and you might cause nightmares for parents who have experience ridding children’s heads of the tiny critters that like to establish veritable cities on our scalps.

But before you panic and start scratching your head — you know you want to — consider this: “Super lice” are the same lice that have been ruining sleepovers for years. They’re not breeding in larger numbers. They just have developed resistance to some of the chemical weapons used against them.

And this comes as little surprise to louse experts.

“Super lice — they’re about a foot long and kill thousands of children,” joked Marc Lame, a clinical professor and entomologist at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, before adding, more seriously, “this is something that we have known is happening.”

“This” refers to the fact that lice today have developed genetic resistance to pyrethroids, over-the-counter medications available to treat (or as it turns out, in many cases, not to treat) infestations.

Pyrethroid products were introduced to the market in the early 1990s. Easy to use, they become many families’ preferred first-line defense.

“The genes of animals, whether it’s tiny bugs or bigger bugs or even humans, are hard-wired for survival. So the more exposure they have to something, the more they try to get around it,” Lame said.

Get around it those lice did.

Still, it surprised many when two researchers announced this month in that they had found resistant lice in 25 states, including Indiana. A decade ago, Kyong Yoon and his colleague John Clark of the University of Massachusetts first identified lice that laughed at pyrethroids.

After 2007, scientists saw resistance jump dramatically, said Yoon, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

Out of 109 populations of lice collected, all but five had full resistance.

“It’s an alarming rate,” Yoon said.

Angela Shirley, owner of The Lice Slayers in Lawrence, has seen firsthand the results of this increasing resistance. Parents have been coming to the company for a while, saying they have tried three or four times to rid their family of lice to no avail.

Lice Slayers offers the AirAllé treatment, which uses a special device to apply heat of about 138 degrees close to the scalp to kill the unwanted visitors and their eggs. In many cases, one treatment, which costs $165, is all it takes to eradicate an infestation.

“They’re not going to become resistant to the heat,” Shirley said.

In recent months, business has picked up dramatically, largely because of awareness and parents’ desire for an alternative to chemical treatments that might not even work, Shirley said. She had more than 100 cases in August.

This summer, Shirley checked incoming campers at Camp Tecumseh to make sure their heads were louse-free. If any louse tried to sneak into the camp, Shirley provided treatment. Some Sundays, she saw three to four cases.

Experts agree that the solution to drug-resistant lice will involve using a mix of weapons and stopping infestations as soon as possible.

Often times, parents or teachers might have been too quick to treat, applying chemicals as soon as they spotted a single nit on a strand of hair. Those that are white and more than a quarter-inch from the scalp are empty and not necessarily signs of an infestation, Lame said.

Instead, parents need to look for viable eggs closer to the scalp and the lice themselves, he said. One louse, he said, might not require treatment, unless it is a pregnant female.

But one louse, Shirley said, is one too many.

“Finding a nit is like being pregnant; you either have it or not,” Shirley said. “When you’re looking for it, it’s almost difficult to find. ... Just because you only saw the one doesn’t mean that they’re not in there.”

Just because they’re in there doesn’t mean they’re in there for good. Parents can avoid the pyrethroids and opt for services such as Shirley’s or prescription medicines, such as benzyl alcohol or Natroba, made by a Carmel company.

Consider these Kryptonite for these super lice.

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.