How a Tick Bite Led to Multiple Limb Amputations for One Oklahoma Woman

 

In an extreme case, a 40-year-old Oklahoma woman recently had parts of all four limbs amputated due to a life-threatening infection she contracted from a tick bite over Fourth of July weekend.

Jo Rogers, a mom of two from Shawnee, was treated for complications of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), a tick-borne illness she likely contracted on a hiking trip.

“When we came back, she started feeling sick, and she thought she might have the flu,” her husband, Keith Rogers, told ABC News on Friday. She then developed a fever and became increasingly dizzy and nauseous.

RELATED: 15 Diseases Doctors Often Get Wrong

About a week after the hike, he took Jo to the emergency room where they tested her for a variety of viruses and infections, including meningitis and West Nile Virus. But they weren’t able to diagnose her with RMSF until her symptoms took a turn for the worse, her husband said. “After things started going bad and she went into septic shock, the blood flow cut off to her limbs, and her hands and feet started going black.”

The doctors had to amputate her right leg at mid-thigh, her left leg below the knee, and both of her arms mid-forearm, Keith told ABC News.

Her cousin Lisa Morgan created a GoFundMe page to help raise money to fund Jo’s medical bills and future needs. The family has raised more than $50,000 so far. “She’s a beautiful, energetic fun person,” Morgan told CNN affiliate KOCO. “Nobody deserves this.”

The Facts About Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

While such severe complications are rare, RMSF is not unheard of, especially during the summer months, says Thomas Mather, PhD, director of the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Vector-Borne Disease and the TickEncounter Resource Center.

“The agent that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a bacteria known as Rickettsia rickettsii. It is typically transmitted by American dog ticks and Rocky Mountain wood ticks, then it infects cells and then it grows and then it gets worse,” Mather told Health, adding that Oklahoma and Arkansas are hot spots for RMSF.

Those two states, plus North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri account for more than 60% of RMSF cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Symptoms include fever, headache, nausea, abdominal cramps, aches, and later on in the infection, a spotted, red rash typically around the hands and ankles.

RELATED: What You Should Do If You Find a Tick

If you start to feel sick after a trip outdoors during peak season—or you find a tick—the key is to get help fast. Delaying treatment can increase risk for serious complications and even death, reports the CDC.

“A tick expert service, like TickEncounter, or a doctor, needs to help you identify both the tick and the possible pathogens associated with the type within that particular geographic location,” Mather says. So bring the tick with you to the doctor in a plastic baggy if you find one.

That’s because there are in fact seven abundant tick species across the United States, and they don’t all transmit the same bacteria or live in the same ecosystems from state to state, complicating things. Example: The blacklegged tick common to the Northeast can transmit Lyme disease, but not RMSF. Once the tick and an infection have been identified, your doctor can treat you with antibiotics.

It’s also a good idea to do your best to keep ticks away: Wear light-colored clothes, long sleeves, and tuck your pants into a high pair of socks. “It’s a practice that never really took off fashion-wise, but it’s a no-brainer,” Mather says. You can also apply the repellant permethrin—which is sold in sprays or solutions you can soak your clothes in—to your garments to repel ticks.

RELATED: Signs You Definitely Need to See a Doctor for That Bug Bite

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Cara Delevingne Opens Up About Struggle With Psoriasis

Photo: Courtesy of Tom Ford

At the height of her modeling career, Cara Delevingne walked as many as 53 runways in a season — an intensive schedule that caused her to develop psoriasis (the same skin condition Kim Kardashian has).

Delevingne’s psoriasis had to be covered by thick layers of makeup, and let’s just say the artists she worked with weren’t necessarily kind. “People would put on gloves and not want to touch me because they thought it was, like, leprosy or something,” she recently told The Times.

“It wasn’t a good time, I was, like, fight and flight for months. Just constantly on edge,” she said. “It is a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.”

The model’s turn towards film seems even more understandable given her experiences on and off the catwalk. It should also be noted that psoriasis, while itchy and sometimes painful, is not contagious — nor should anyone feel bad for having it.

This post originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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Melissa McCarthy on Her New Clothing Line: ‘Women Come in All Sizes’

Photo: Getty Images

 

Melissa McCarthy’s clothing line Seven7 became available for purchase this month, but before you even ask, this is not just a plus-size line. Rather, it’s a clothing line for women of all sizes.

In an interview with Refinery29, McCarthy opened up about why that distinction is so important to her.

She said it’s not just the terminology that bugs her, it’s the way the clothes are placed in the stores that’s the problem. “I don’t like the segregated plus section. You’re saying: ‘You don’t get what everybody else gets. You have to go shop up by the tire section,’” she said.

“Women come in all sizes. Seventy percent of women in the United States are a size 14 or above, and that’s technically ‘plus-size,’ so you’re taking your biggest category of people and telling them, ‘You’re not really worthy.’ I find that very strange,” she added. “I also find it very bad business. It doesn’t make a lot of sense numbers-wise. It’s like, if you open a restaurant and you say, ‘We’re primarily gonna serve people that don’t eat.’ It’s like, what? You would be nuts. Yet, people do it with clothing lines all the time, and no one seems to have a problem with it. I just don’t get why we always have to group everything into a good or bad, right or wrong category. I just think, if you’re going to make women’s clothing, make women’s clothing.”

RELATED: How to Have the Best Closet Ever

Though McCarthy made a name for herself in movies like Bridesmaids and Heat, she started out as a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She told People last month that she made sure that the clothes, which are available in size 4 through 24, avoided all of her pet peeves.

“I’ve worn every single piece. There are little jeans that are super stretchy and they come all the way up, because I just do not need to see anyone’s muffin top, and I do not need to see anyone bend over and be able to tell what color underwear they’re wearing anymore.”

The line is shoppable on HSN, and in-store at Nordstrom, Lane Bryant, and Bloomingdale’s, to name a few.

RELATED: The Awesome Reason Why This Fashion Designer Only Uses Plus-Size Models

 

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Shorter Women, Higher Odds for Preterm Birth?

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A pregnant woman’s height may affect her risk for preterm birth, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at data on nearly 3,500 Nordic women and their babies. They found that shorter mothers had shorter pregnancies, smaller babies and a higher risk for preterm birth.

“Our finding shows that a mother’s height has a direct impact on how long her pregnancy lasts,” said researcher Dr. Louis Muglia, an investigator with the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center Ohio Collaborative.

“The explanation for why this happens is unclear but could depend not only on unknown genes but also on woman’s lifetime of nutrition and her environment,” Muglia said in a March of Dimes news release.

That said, short women shouldn’t worry that they’re destined to deliver prematurely. The study only found an association between short stature and preterm birth, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

The study was published online Aug. 18 in the journal PLoS Medicine.

Preterm birth, which takes place before 37 weeks of pregnancy, is the leading cause of death of newborns in the United States, where more than 450,000 babies are born early each year. The country’s preterm birth rate is worse than many other wealthy nations, the March of Dimes said.

Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson, March of Dimes senior vice president for research and global programs, said his organization’s goal is to identify genes that govern fetal growth and length of pregnancy.

“That a woman’s height influences gestational length, independent of the genes she passes on that determine fetal size, is a major finding by our research networks, and the first of what we expect to be many genetic contributions,” he said in the news release.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about preterm birth.

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Diabetes Drug Might Also Help Some Patients Lose Weight

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — High doses of the diabetes drug liraglutide (Victoza) seem to help patients with type 2 diabetes lose weight, a new study suggests.

In a trial funded by the drug’s maker Novo Nordisk, people who took 3 milligrams (mg) of Victoza daily over 56 weeks lost an average of 6 percent of their body weight (14 pounds).

According to Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the 3 mg-dose for weight loss, but not to treat diabetes. Only lower doses, either 1.2 mg or 1.8 mg a day, have the agency’s blessing for treating type 2 diabetes.

“This is the first study specifically designed to investigate the efficacy of liraglutide for weight management in patients with type 2 diabetes at a dose of 3 mg, and not surprisingly was found to be effective and tolerated for weight loss,” said Zonszein, who was not involved in the trial.

“We need these studies, as clinicians have a big problem trying to use higher doses of liraglutide in obese patients who have diabetes. Hopefully, the FDA will change the arbitrary restrictions,” he added.

In the study, 846 overweight or obese patients with diabetes were randomly assigned to 1.8 mg or 3 mg of Victoza or a placebo daily. Those who took 1.8 mg lost an average of close to 5 percent of their body weight (11 pounds), while patients taking a placebo lost an average of 2 percent of their body weight (almost 5 pounds), the researchers reported.

According to the study, published Aug. 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 54 percent of those receiving the 3 mg-dose lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, compared with slightly more than 40 percent of those on the 1.8 mg dose and just over 21 percent of those taking a placebo.

Moreover, just over 25 percent of those on the high dose of Victoza lost at least 10 percent of their body weight, compared with 16 percent of those on the 1.8 mg-dose and close to 7 percent of those taking a placebo. Patients also followed a reduced-calorie diet and increased their physical activity, the researchers noted.

“We now have evidence that supports the use of the 3 mg-dose for weight loss in patients with type 2 diabetes,” said lead researcher Dr. Melanie Davies, a professor of diabetes medicine at the University of Leicester in the U.K.

In people with diabetes, the 3 mg-dose of Victoza helped patients achieve clinically significant weight loss and more than 50 percent of patients were able to achieve a weight loss of more than 5 percent, she said. “Also, this higher dose of Victoza provided additional blood sugar-lowering than the dose currently licensed to treat patients with diabetes,” she added.

Zonszein noted that since the higher dose of Victoza is not approved to treat diabetes, insurance companies will not cover the cost of the drug when it is prescribed to diabetics.

“We can prescribe up to 1.8 mg for diabetes, that is the highest dose, but insurance companies will not approve the 3 mg-dose for diabetes,” he said.

Victoza is expensive, Zonszein added, and the 3 mg-dose can cost $800 to $1,000 a month. Insurance covers the cost only when that dose is prescribed for weight loss.

Zonszein sees no problem using the higher dose to control blood sugar as well as to help patients lose weight. Victoza is part of a drug regimen to control blood sugar that can include metformin and other drugs, he explained.

To get insurance companies to cover the higher dose for a diabetic patient, Zonszein said he has to use a workaround. “When we call an insurance company for approval, we don’t tell them the patient is diabetic, but is obese,” he said.

More information

For more on type 2 diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association.

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6 Things I Wish I Knew Before My First Fitness Class

Photo: Getty Images

The bright lights, wall-to-wall mirrors and spandex-clad regulars might leave you too intimidated to even step foot inside a boutique fitness studio. Which is totally understandable. (And why we love our DailyBurn workouts that much more.) It’s natural to feel like an outsider looking in: “There are so many unspoken rules, unfamiliar machines and potentially hard-to-navigate areas,” says Lisa Niren, head coach at Peloton Cycle. But don’t let your anxiety stop you from checking out that new HIIT class or stepping on a VersaClimber. Here, a few things you should know before you attend, plus tips from top boutique trainers on how to handle it all.

RELATED: 9 Trainer Tips to Get More From Your Fitness Class

6 Things to Know Before Your First Fitness Class

1. It’s OK to ask for help.
“When you first walk into a class, find your instructor or facilities staff and have them get you set up properly,” says Niren. She recommends arriving at least 10 minutes early — we’d even say 15 if you want to get comfortably situated before the sweat session begins. And your instructor is there preciselyto help you, especially in terms of your positioning. “Proper form is everything [when it comes to avoiding injury],” says Marcy Modica, instructor at SLT NYC, a Pilates studio in New York City. “It is the instructor’s job to set you up for success; tell you where to put your hands, feet and body, where you should be feeling the exercise, or how to modify it for any injuries or sensitive spots,” she adds. Bottom line? If you need something, speak up.

2. Comparing yourself to others won’t make you feel better or worse about yourself.
While you may feel insecure, keep in mind that everyone is there for his or her own good, not to judge your performance. “No one cares how you look or what you’re wearing,” or, in the case of Pilates, how high your leg extension is. “Everyone is too busy focusing on their own form,” says Modica. So chill out and don’t worry if you can’t get into Crow Pose (most of us still struggle after years of regular yoga practice). We’re all at different levels, and the guy in a handstand next to you isn’t bothered by your newb status. If you’re still feeling unsure of yourself, Niren suggests bringing a workout pal along or first trying the class at non-peak hours.

RELATED: 7 Beginner Yoga Poses to Get You Through Your First Class

3. Getting frustrated is part of the process.
Remember: These pro-designed workouts are designed to be tough, not unlike our Inferno HR or Pilates: Phase 2 both are. Attending a new class is supposed to be challenging, explains Modica. In fact, it’s almost “like learning a new language,” she says. “Be patient, keep trying and know it will get less frustrating the more you practice.” Whatever you do though, “just don’t quit,” says Niren. Frustration can sometimes be the ignition of true passion, even if you don’t recognize that at first. The key, says Niren, is to look for signs of change, soreness being the most obvious, and generally first, sign.

4. You’ll want to eat something before. Seriously.
“It makes me crazy when someone shows up to class and has to stop multiple times because they’re feeling faint. It signals to me that they are not taking care of themselves,” says Modica. “You can’t move nonstop for an hour without fueling your body.” Niren’s favorite pre (and post!) workout snack is a medium size banana. “They’re essentially nature’s Power Bar,” she says, “and are packed with digestible carbohydrates and loaded with potassium, which helps maintain muscle function.” Not a fruit fan? Try a slice of whole-wheat toast with peanut butter.

RELATED: The Ultimate Guide to Pre and Post-Workout Carbohydrates

5. Dehydration can happen to anyone. And it ain’t pretty.
Drinking water is critical to a great workout: after all, it does make up about two-thirds of your body. (And forget those fancy flavors you’re seeing in the market — plain H20 is always best, says Modica, not to mention calorie-free.) Bring your own bottle, since each studio’s water supply may vary. And don’t worry about overhydrating, also known as hyponatremia. It’s unlikely you’ll drink too much group fitness setting, Modica says. It’s more commonly associated with endurance sports, she adds.

RELATED: 8 Cool New Fit Gear Finds on Kickstarter

6. There are good days, and then there are bad days.
It’s important to remind yourself that progress isn’t necessarily (and in fact, often not) linear. There will be classes when you can nail a resistance you hadn’t hit before or get into a new pose, and likewise, there will be classes that follow where you can’t get those same power numbers or move your limbs the same way. That’s totally fine. Remember, there will be peaks and valleys. Enjoy the ride — and both the mental and physical rewards you’ll reap.

More from Life by DailyBurn:

15 Quick and Easy High-Protein Snacks

4 Mistakes You’re Making Setting Up Your Spin Bike

The 20 Worst People at the Gym, According to Trainers

Life by DailyBurn is dedicated to helping you live a healthier, happier and more active lifestyle. Whether your goal is to lose weight, gain strength or de-stress, a better you is well within reach. Get more health and fitness tips at Life by DailyBurn.

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Video Games Linked to Aggression, Psychologists’ Group Says

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — There is a link between violent video games and higher levels of aggression in players, according to a new report from a leading group of psychologists.

However, there isn’t enough evidence to prove that playing violent video games raises the risk of criminal behavior or violence, the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Violent Media said.

The members of the task force reviewed studies published between 2005 and 2013.

“The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive [thoughts and emotion] and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression,” the report stated.

In an APA news release, task force chairman Mark Appelbaum said that “scientists have investigated the use of violent video games for more than two decades but to date, there is very limited research addressing whether violent video games cause people to commit acts of criminal violence.

“However, the link between violence in video games and increased aggression in players is one of the most studied and best established in the field,” he added.

Still, study results have been conflicting. Early in 2014, a study of 3,000 children by researchers at Iowa State University found that frequent exposure to violent video did seem to boost the likelihood of aggressive behavior in children and teens.

However, another 2014 study — this time from Stetson University in Florida — found that between 1996 and 2011 rates of violence among young people fell in the United States, even as video games became more violent over time.

Worries about a connection between video game use and violence spiked in 2012 after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Lanza was obsessed with violent video games, and following the massacre some members of Congress called for restrictions on them.

However, the APA panel’s new report concluded that it’s premature to blame video games alone for any rise in a player’s tendency to violence.

“No single risk factor consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently,” the task force wrote. “Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior. The research reviewed here demonstrates that violent video game use is one such risk factor.”

The Entertainment Software Association, a group representing the video game industry, took issue with the findings.

“Numerous medical professionals, researchers, and courts all debunk the fundamental thesis of their argument,” the group said in a statement, CBS News reported. “In tearing down similar faulty research, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically ruled that ‘psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.’ We could not state it better.”

However, based on the new report, the APA is calling on video game makers to design products that provide parents with better control over the amount of violence in the games, and to design games that match players’ age and mental development. The APA also called for more research to learn more about the effects of violent video games.

For example, there is a lack of knowledge about whether violent video games have different effects on girls and boys, how such games affect children younger than 10, and how the games affect youngsters’ development.

“We know that there are numerous risk factors for aggressive behavior,” Appelbaum said. “What researchers need to do now is conduct studies that look at the effects of video game play in people at risk for aggression or violence due to a combination of risk factors. For example, how do depression or delinquency interact with violent video game use?”

“While there is some variation among the individual studies, a strong and consistent general pattern has emerged from many years of research that provides confidence in our general conclusions,” Appelbaum said.

“As with most areas of science, the picture presented by this research is more complex than is usually included in news coverage and other information prepared for the general public,” he concluded.

More information

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry has more about children and violent video games.

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E-Cigs May Spur Teens to Try Smoking: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Concerns that e-cigarettes are a stepping stone to smoking for teens appear to have merit, new research suggests.

Los Angeles-area teenagers who had never smoked before were three to four times more likely to try cigarettes or other tobacco products after they’d experimented with an e-cigarette, according to the findings published in the Aug. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“More teens have been using e-cigarettes for recreational uses, including teens who’ve never smoked before,” said study author Adam Leventhal, an associate professor of preventive medicine and psychology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. “Because nicotine is such an addictive drug, it makes sense that if you enjoy the experience of inhaling nicotine, you might be more willing to experiment with other products that provide inhaled nicotine.”

This is the first study to show a potential link between e-cigarette use and smoking in teenagers, said Dr. Nancy Rigotti, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“It’s certainly a cause of concern, because it’s the first time we’ve seen that,” added Rigotti, who also is a professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “There’s been this theoretical concern this might happen, and this is the first time we’ve actually seen some evidence that it looks like it can happen.”

E-cigarettes have been presented by their manufacturers as a means to help adult smokers quit the habit, or at least provide a safer alternative to tobacco. The American Vaping Association, an e-cigarette industry group, asserts that the devices have helped several million adults quit smoking since their introduction nearly 10 years ago.

However, teenagers are trying e-cigarettes at a faster rate than adults, fueling some of the greatest increases in sales, Leventhal said. There currently are no federal regulations banning the sale or marketing of e-cigarettes to teens.

“These new e-cigarette devices are really efficient pieces of machinery. They heat these solutions to create aerosols that are rich with nicotine, so now they’re really effective at providing a shot of nicotine to the brain of a user,” Leventhal said.

To see whether e-cigarettes might lead to teen smoking, researchers recruited more than 2,500 ninth graders from 10 public high schools in Los Angeles.

Of those kids, none had ever tried smoking before but 222 said they had used an e-cigarette.

A year later, the kids who had tried e-cigarettes were roughly four times more likely to have tried smoking tobacco, compared with kids who hadn’t used an e-cigarette, the researchers found.

But because this was an observational study, the researchers couldn’t prove a cause-and-effect link between e-cigarette use and smoking, Rigotti noted. They also couldn’t say whether the kids who smoked had only tried one cigarette or had become regular smokers.

Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit that promotes vapor products, echoed Rigotti’s points.

“As the authors of the study admit, no attempt was made to measure habitual or even past month usage of either product, so the result should be interpreted with significant caution,” he said.

The researchers did, however, take into account other risk factors that increase a teenager’s chances of smoking, Leventhal noted. These included impulsive tendencies, depression, use of other drugs, and whether friends or family are smokers.

“We even straight-out asked the teens, ‘Do you think you are likely to smoke over the next six months, and would you try smoking if one of your best friends offered it to you?'” he said.

After controlling for these other risk factors, researchers discovered that teen e-cigarette users were still almost three times more likely than non-users to eventually graduate to smoking.

“These results were consistent across a number of different types of smokeable tobacco products, including regular cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco water pipes,” Leventhal said.

E-cigarette users also were more likely to have dabbled with at least two different types of smokeable tobacco, he added.

The study calls for prompt federal action, said Rigotti, who wrote an accompanying editorial. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed rules that would ban e-cigarette sales to people under the age of 18 and require warning labels, but those rules have not been finalized. The public comment period on those draft rules ended Aug. 8.

“The concern has been all along that they might attract young people,” Rigotti said. “There’s nobody who thinks it’s a good idea to addict a new generation to cigarettes or even to nicotine. These are nicotine delivery devices that are sold in ways that are very attractive to kids, and there’s no regulation on them at the moment.”

But e-cigarette manufacturers are concerned that regulation will go too far, and interfere with adults’ ability to use the devices as a means to help quit smoking, Conley said.

“Unfortunately, ardent opponents of vaping have a history of making wild and unsubstantiated claims, and this study will be twisted and used to push for unjustified excise taxes and small business-killing regulations,” he said.

“While reasonable measures to control youth access are warranted, all policy decisions about vaping must consider not just youth, but also the adults who would otherwise be smoking in the absence of these innovative technology products,” Conley noted.

More information

For more on e-cigarettes, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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Head Lice Now Resistant to Common Meds in 25 States

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Drug-resistant head lice are very likely coming to a school near you, U.S. investigators warn.

At least 25 states host lice populations that don’t respond to common over-the-counter treatments, a new analysis reveals.

Permethrin, part of the pyrethroid class of insecticides, has long been the go-to weapon against head lice, mosquitoes, bedbugs and other insects.

But continued exposure to permethrin has caused a huge swath of the dreaded insects to develop genetic mutations that render such drugs useless.

“It’s a very classic resistance story,” said study lead author Kyong Yoon, an assistant professor in the biological sciences and environmental sciences program at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.

“Permethrin products were introduced to U.S. consumers in the early ’90s,” Yoon said. “But the first registered problem was reported from Israel in 1995, probably because they had it in use even earlier. Then in 2000 we found genetic mutations causing resistance in head lice here.”

Head lice, which can’t jump or fly, transmit by direct physical contact. They quickly infest the neck and head, feeding on blood and attaching their eggs to the base of hair shafts.

“They itch, but they do not transmit disease,” said Yoon. “So it’s not at all life-threatening, even if it’s very frustrating and uncomfortable.”

Six million to 12 million U.S. children are infested with head lice every year, “with parents spending about $350 million dollars annually on permethrin-laced over-the-counter and prescription treatments,” Yoon said. Lice infestations occur in rich neighborhoods as well as poor ones.

For this study, Yoon and his fellow researchers developed molecular diagnostic tools to track American lice. Results are still coming in from several states evaluated so far.

“We have found 100 percent resistance among 104 lice populations out of 109 we tested,” Yoon said. “It’s really alarming.”

In 25 states — including Arizona, California, the Carolinas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia — lice have what Yoon calls “knock-down resistant mutations” — a triple whammy of genetic alterations that render them immune to over-the-counter permethrin treatments.

Lice in four states — New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon — have developed partial resistance, the researchers found.

Michigan’s lice have no resistance as yet. Why remains unclear.

Yoon is scheduled to present his team’s findings Tuesday in Boston at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. Data and conclusions presented at meetings are usually considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The good news is that prescription medications that don’t contain permethrin remain effective against lice. These contain powerful agents such as benzyl alcohol, ivermectin, malathion and spinosad. Lindane shampoo is another alternative for difficult-to-treat cases.

“Prescription drugs will be pricier. But if you try and save time and money and treat it on your own it will probably get worse rather than better,” Yoon said.

Philip Tierno, professor of microbiology and pathology at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City, expressed little surprise with the findings.

Over the years powerful pesticides have been taken off the market, Tierno explained. DDT was withdrawn in the 1970s because of environmental concerns, he said, and organophosphates, which were neuro-toxic, were restricted after 9/11 because the government feared its use by terrorists. “Only pest control experts had access,” he said.

“That meant that lice and other things like bedbugs were constantly exposed to what we had left: permethrin. So they became resistant,” Tierno said.

No one should panic, however. “There is recourse by means of prescription drugs,” he said. “Just go to your doctor before you go to your drug store.”

More information

There’s more on head lice at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Quick, Paper-Based Ebola Test May Help in Remote Areas

TUESDAY, Aug. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A paper-based testing device can quickly diagnose Ebola among people who live in remote areas, according to a new study.

A blood sample from a person with a fever is taken and placed on a paper strip in the device. The paper changes a specific color to indicate if a person has Ebola, yellow fever or dengue fever.

The need for a simple, rapid Ebola test is urgently needed. In 2014, the largest Ebola outbreak in history began in West Africa.

One of the keys to containing an epidemic is to quickly identify and isolate Ebola patients. But because early signs of Ebola, such as fever and headache, are similar to dengue and yellow fever symptoms, these diseases are initially hard to tell apart without a blood test.

The new paper-based test takes minutes and the device does not require electricity. The test works in a similar manner to over-the-counter pregnancy tests. While lab tests are more accurate, they require technical expertise and expensive equipment. With this paper test device, people with Ebola in remote areas can be quickly identified and placed in quarantine, the researchers explained.

“These are not meant to replace [standard lab tests] because we can’t match their accuracy. But this is a complementary technique for places with no running water or electricity,” explained researcher Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., in a news release from the American Chemical Society.

Details about the device — developed by researchers at MIT, Harvard Medical School and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — are scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in Boston. Findings presented at meetings are generally considered preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The researchers plan to produce free kits for distribution.

“We’re giving people the components so they can build the devices themselves,” Hamad-Schifferli said. “We are trying to move this into the field and put it in the hands of the people who need it.”

The Ebola outbreak has slowed in the three most-affected West African countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so far, an estimated 27,900 people have been infected and more than 11,000 people have died in the epidemic.

More information

The World Health Organization has more about Ebola.

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