Harvard Health Content API

A newer drug appears to work well against head lice, researchers report. The new study used a lotion made with ivermectin, an insecticide. Researchers randomly divided 765 children who were infested with head lice into 2 groups. One group received ivermectin lotion. The other got a placebo containing no medicine. The lotions were applied to the hair and left on for 10 minutes before rinsing. A day later, 95% of the ivermectin group and 31% of the placebo group were louse-free. Researchers also checked at day 15 because louse eggs may hatch after treatment. At that point, 74% of the ivermectin group and 18% of the placebo group still had no lice. Researchers said current treatments, such as permethrin and pyrethrin, are only about 50% effective. Lice also have been gaining resistance to these treatments.

Breast cancer screening of women over 50 saves lives, but leads to overtreatment of many more women, an expert group says. For every life saved, the group says, 3 women will be treated for cancers that never would have harmed them. The United Kingdom’s health department and Cancer Research U.K. sponsored the study. The expert panel added together the numbers from 11 prior studies. They concluded that screening of women in their 50s reduces breast cancer deaths by 20%. They looked more closely at 3 studies that randomly divided women into 2 groups. One group was invited to regular screening, and the other group was not. Based on these studies and other information, the expert group estimated overtreatment rates. In the UK, women over 50 are invited to have screening mammograms every 3 years.

Cigarette smoking robs women of more than 10 years of life, on average, a long-term study of British women has found. But quitting early greatly reduces that risk — up to 97% for women who quit by age 30. The numbers come from the Million Women Study, which started in the late 1990s. Women were 50 to 65 when the study began. Therefore, they were part of the generation of women most likely to smoke. Smoking for women peaked in the 1960s. Women filled out questionnaires when the study began. They showed that 20% were smokers, 28% ex-smokers and 52% had never smoked. Women answered the same questions 3 and 8 years later. During 12 years of follow-up, about 6% of the women died. Women still smoking 3 years after the study began were 3 times as likely to die as women who never smoked.