PARENTS of asthma sufferers should try washing their children鈥檚 hair with
an antidandruff shampoo. Researchers in Brazil have found that the skin flakes
on children鈥檚 scalps provide a comfortable and overlooked refuge for house-dust
mites, which trigger allergic responses that can cause asthma attacks.
Charles Naspitz and his colleagues in the paediatrics department of the
Federal University of S茫o Paulo studied children from middle-class
households whose general standards of hygiene were 鈥渟atisfactory鈥�. Using a
hand-held vacuum cleaner with a fine nozzle they collected fine dust from the
children鈥檚 scalps, just hours after they washed their hair with an ordinary
shampoo.
The researchers found two common species of mite, Dermatophagoides
pteronyssinus and Blomia tropicalis, in the scalp dust. The
children had similar numbers of mites on their scalps whether or not they had
asthma. But blood tests showed that while the asthmatic children made antibodies
to them, the non-asthmatic children did not.
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Naspitz and his colleagues say that the scalp is an ideal home for mites.
Conditions there are warm and humid, and the mites can feast on the skin flakes.
The Brazilian researchers argue that many parents鈥� efforts to keep mites under
control, for example by vacuuming mattresses and putting pillows into the
freezer, may have failed because no one thought to banish them from chidren鈥檚
scalps. They report their findings in last week鈥檚 issue of The Lancet
.
鈥淚 think this is a very interesting observation,鈥� says Stephen Durham, an
asthma specialist at the National Heart and Lung Institute of the Brompton
Hospital, London. 鈥淎s far as I know, no one has done this before.鈥�
Neither Durham nor the Brazilian team recommends vacuuming children鈥檚 heads
to keep the mites under control. Instead, says Durham, parents should try using
an antidandruff shampoo to keep the number of skin scales down.