- The bugs have made homes around human groins since man first appeared
By Daily Mail Reporter
Published: 21:44 EDT, 13 January 2013 | Updated: 12:05 EDT, 14 January 2013
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Add this to the list of ever growing reasons to praise the bikini wax - it may have made pubic lice an endangered species.
Doctors say that as pubic hair disappears, so do the crab-shaped insects that have made homes in human groins since man first appeared.
In Australia, Sydney's main sexual health clinic hasn't treated a woman with pubic lice since 2008 while male cases have fallen 80 per cent from about 100 a decade ago.
'It used to be extremely common; it’s now rarely seen,' said Basil Donovan, head of sexual health at the University of New South Wales’s Kirby Institute and a physician at the Sydney Sexual Health Centre. 'Without doubt, it’s better grooming.'
Manhattan's J Sisters salon attracts as many as 200 clients a day for their hair removal treatments and custom designs, with their signature Brazilian costing about $75.
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Even men are having their pubic hair removed in a treatment called the 'Sunga' that runs $90.
More than 80 percent of college students in the U.S. remove all or some of their pubic hair. And the waxing technique popularized in the 190s by a Manhattan salon run by Brazilian sisters is still trendy.
'Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations,' said Ian F. Burgess, a medical entomologist with Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England. 'Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.'
Pubic lice infest up to 10 per cent of the population, researchers at East Carolina University said in a 2009 study.
The pests are usually treated with topical insecticides. The trends suggest a new way of curbing one of the world's most contagious sexually transmitted infections.
Itchy skin reactions and infection make lice a public health hazard.
Removing hair to destroy their habitat has also boosted sales for hair removal products from companies like Procter and Gamble.
A female louse needs to only mate once to be fertile for the rest of her lifetime, and can lay eggs every day. Young lice immediately feed on blood.
Head lice scalp, body lice hid in clothing, and pubic lice predominately stay near the pubis though their is concern they could migrate if their habitats were destroyed.
Wilson linked the trend with the growing popularity of pubic hair removal she and colleagues observed among patients attending the genitourinary medicine department at the General Infirmary in Leeds, northern England.
'We put the flag out, so to speak, if we see a case of pubic lice nowadays,' Janet Wilson, consultant in sexual health and HIV, told Bloomberg. 'The ‘habitat destruction’ of the pubic lice is increasing and they are becoming an endangered species.'
