A PEDICULICIDAL ACTIVITY OF CLOVE OIL

The humans head lice are a nuisance for millions of people worldwide with high prevalence in children. Head lice have been treated by methods that include the physical removal of lice, various domestic treatments and conventional insecticides. None of these methods render complete protection and there is clear evidence for the evolution of resistance and cross-resistance to conventional insecticides. Non-toxic alternative options are hence needed for head lice treatment or prevention and natural products from plants, especially essential oils (EOs) are good for safer control agents that may provide good anti-lice activity and low levels of evolved resistance. A few Essential oils have been tested as repellents with promissory results, although often in vitro tests and clinical trials produce contradictory results. The use of pyrethroids to control head louse infestations have suffered considerable loss of efficacy due to the development of resistance. In the last past few years, several new alternative products to synthetic pyrethroids have been developed and are sold in the market against head lice. The present study investigated the efficacy of some essential oil that have high medicinal value and therefore use against head lice as Chemical constituents of essential oils present a wide range of biological activities. The aim of this work was to evaluate insecticidal activity of essential oil specially clove oil and eucalyptus oil and compare the relative toxicity of essential oil. In the present study, it is observed that from literature survey it is given that eucalyptus has higher toxicity than clove but practically clove oil have higher toxicity as compare to eucalyptus oil to head lice was found.  This essential oil was obtained by distillation process and components were identified by FTIR and GC.