Body Lice: How to Recognize an Infestation Early — and Stop It Quickly
Health ConditionsSkin Conditions

Everything You Need to Know About Body Lice, Including Symptoms and Treatments

Everything You Need to Know About Body Lice, Including Symptoms and Treatments
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Updated on November 25, 2025
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If you’ve ever felt itchy all over your body, you might have wondered if you had a rash or an allergic reaction. But in rare cases, your scratching can be due to body lice. Learn more about the symptoms, diagnosis standards, and treatment options for body lice.

What Are Body Lice?

Lice are a type of parasitic insect. Three types of lice can live off of people: head lice, pubic lice, and body lice. All versions are considered flat and wingless, but there are some key differences. Body lice (Pediculus humanus corporis), for instance, are the only variety of lice known to spread disease.

Also, while body lice do feed off of human blood like the others, they don’t actually reside on your body. Instead, body lice lay their eggs on or near the seams of clothing and bedding, and simply crawl onto your skin several times a day to feed.

What Do Body Lice Look Like?

Body lice, like head lice, can be found in three different stages: the egg (or nit), the nymph (the young louse), and the adult. Lice nits can be mistaken for dandruff. Adult lice are tan or grayish-white, have six legs, and resemble the shape of a sesame seed.

Nits are most often found in the seams of an infested person’s clothing, such as under the armpits, waist, groin, or neck. They take one to two weeks to hatch into nymphs. After another 9 to 12 days, nymphs mature into an adult lice, which need blood to survive.

Body lice are typically larger than head lice, which means they might be easier to spot on the body or on fabric surfaces.

Signs and Symptoms of Body Lice

If you’re dealing with a body lice infestation, you’ll notice tiny, red, pinpoint bites on your body. Most often, the bites happen on the areas where clothing seams touch skin, such as around your neck, shoulders, armpits, waist, and groin area. You’ll also notice intense itching and marks from scratching, which can sometimes lead to bacterial infections.

If you’ve had a body lice infestation for a long time, you might develop a condition known as vagabond’s disease (also known as pediculosis corporis). With this condition, heavily bitten areas of skin become thick and discolored, particularly on the stomach.

Spotting body lice feeding on your skin is another major sign of infestation. While nits can sometimes be found attached to body hair, lice on the head and scalp, in particular, are usually head lice.

How Is Body Lice Diagnosed?

Body lice are usually diagnosed when viable body-lice eggs or live, active lice are found in the seams of clothing. At times, body lice are spotted crawling or feeding on the skin. Although they’re small, they can be seen with the naked eye. A magnifying glass can help you zero in on body lice or nits. You might discover them with a self-exam, or your healthcare provider might find them during a check-up.

How Do Body Lice Spread?

Just like head lice, body lice cannot hop or fly. Instead, they can quickly spread through close physical contact with a person who has body lice — or via direct contact with clothing, beds, bed linens, or towels that were used by a person with body lice.

 You can’t get body lice from cats, dogs, or other pets.

Risk Factors for Body Lice

Certain groups of people have a higher risk of catching body lice infestations. These include:

  • People who live in crowded conditions
  • People without access to regular bathing or clean clothes
  • Those experiencing homelessness
  • Refugees
  • Survivors of war or natural disasters

While people living outside of these conditions can also get body lice, it’s much rarer than in the above scenarios.

Is a Body Lice Infestation Dangerous?

In general, body lice cause minimal harm. But under certain circumstances, they can spread bacterial diseases such as epidemic typhus, trench fever, and louse-borne relapsing fever.

Typhus and trench fever are typically spread when an infested person scratches parasite feces into their skin. Relapsing fever, caused by bacteria called Borrelia recurrentis, happens when the person crushes the infected louse, and the bacteria in the louse invade the bite site or the skin of the fingers that crushed it.

If you happen to develop any one of these bacterial infections, you’ll likely have a fever and other body-wide symptoms. You’ll likely need a course of antibiotics to treat the infection.

How to Treat a Case of Body Lice

Unless you have a bacterial infection, usually you won’t need medication to treat a body lice infestation. Instead, treatment involves personal hygiene and changes to your environment. Here are some treatment strategies:

  • Treat skin irritations at the doctor’s office. If you have itching or rashes, your doctor can suggest over-the-counter topical ointments to relieve symptoms.
  • Wash or replace clothes and linens. Body lice can live up to three days on clothing, bedding, or towels without a blood meal.

     That means people who are infested must replace or decontaminate their belongings by thoroughly washing and drying them at high temperatures — at least 130 degrees F.

  • Dry-clean or seal up the rest. Clothing and other items that aren’t machine-washable can be either dry-cleaned or placed inside a tightly sealed plastic bag for two weeks.

  • Use an iron, too. Mattresses and upholstered furniture should either be hot-ironed or sprayed with lice-killing products — i.e., permethrin or pyrethrin lotions, or prescription medications like ivermectin or malathion — to get rid of body-lice eggs from the seams. Avoid exposure to these infested items for two weeks.

  • Consider insecticides. In some cases where there is a risk for epidemic typhus, chemical insecticides may also be used.

  • Improve hygiene. If you have body lice, it's important to be able to regularly change into clean clothes. Also aim to bathe at least once a week. Body lice infestations are extremely unlikely to continue on any person who bathes regularly and who has at least weekly access to freshly laundered clothing and bedding.

  • Use permethrin cream. For those with lice infestations and their close family members, head-to-toe application of permethrin cream is also recommended.

The Takeaway

  • Body lice are parasitic insects that feed on human blood. They lay their eggs in the seams of clothing and bedding, and they crawl onto skin several times a day to feed. They’re highly contagious.
  • Body lice will cause red pinpoint bite marks in the groin, armpits, neck, shoulders, or waist. Severe itching and bacterial infections can also occur.
  • Spotting eggs or live lice on the body is a common way to diagnose body lice.
  • Treatment often involves washing all fabric belongings in extremely hot water, regularly bathing, using permethrin cream and insecticides, or visiting a doctor to get personalized care.

Resources We Trust

EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
  1. Body Lice. Mayo Clinic. November 16, 2022.
  2. About Body Lice. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. June 24, 2024.
  3. Body Lice. Cleveland Clinic. March 4, 2022.
  4. Fathi R. Body Lice. MedlinePlus. July 1, 2023.
  5. Lice Infestation. Merck Manual Consumer Version. November 2025.
  6. Body Lice Fact Sheet. Texas Department of State Health Services.
  7. Body Lice. MedlinePlus. November 29, 2023.
  8. Body Lice. California Department of Public Health, Division of Communicable Disease Control. April 2020.
  9. Powers J et al. Pediculosis Corporis. StatPearls. February 12, 2024.
  10. Antibiotics: When Do We Really Need Them? Johns Hopkins Medicine.
  11. Lice. Virginia Commonwealth University, Student Health Services. June 2023.
  12. Body Lice. Mayo Clinic. November 16, 2022.
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