Recent studies have demonstrated that essential oils, and in particular, pennyroyal, tea tree and anise, have potent insecticidal and acaricidal (mite-killing) activity. The individual components of essential oils are now being investigated in order to give a rational basis to discover which essential oils may prove to be the most effective all-round agents for killing headlice and their eggs, and treating scabies, and for eliminating house dust mites, a major cause of asthma.
In recent years, non-human primates have become indispensable as experimental animals in many fields of biomedical research. Pharmaceutical and related industries alone use about 2000,000 primates a year. Respiratory mite infestations in lungs of old world monkeys are of particular concern because the resulting tissue damage can directly effect experimental results, especially in those studies involving the cardiopulmonary system. There has been increasing documentation of primate parasitology in the past twenty years.
The Medicinal Use of Essential Oils and Their Components for Treating Lice and Mite Infestations