Jewel Vine as an External Parasiticide: Lice, Mites, Ticks and Derris Dust
This is the one claim about Derris elliptica that is genuinely traditional, genuinely commercial, and genuinely supported by real trial data: pounded or powdered root, applied to the outside of an animal or a plant, kills external parasites and insect pests. That is the entire claim. It is not a claim about swallowing anything, and nothing in this article should be read as one. What follows is the evidence for the external claim, evaluated with the same rigour the rest of this site applies to internal claims — including a controlled trial that found no benefit, reported here because burying a negative result would make this page less honest than the marketing it exists to correct.
Table of Contents
- The Short Answer
- What Is Actually Documented: Livestock and Crop Use
- Rotenone as an Acaricide: The Varroa Mite Evidence
- Cattle, Sheep and the Ectoparasite Trials
- One Trial Found No Benefit — Report It Anyway
- The Human Topical Claim: Lice and Scabies
- Why the Human Evidence Is Thin, and What Replaced It
- Even "External Only" Has an Ingestion Pathway
- Mosquito and Snail Larvicide: The Environmental-Application Use
- What This Page Is Not Claiming
- Numbered Findings: What Is Not Known
- Key Research Papers
- External Resources
- Connections
The Short Answer
Powdered or crushed Derris elliptica root, and the rotenone extracted from it, has a long, real record as an external insecticide and acaricide: dusted onto livestock against lice, ticks, mites and fleas; used in some regions on humans against scabies and head lice; and sprayed on crops against caterpillars, beetles and other pests. Modern trial-grade evidence backs some of this — particularly the veterinary and apicultural (beekeeping) uses — more solidly than it backs the human topical use, which is old, plausible, and thinly tested in the indexed literature that this site can actually verify. None of it is evidence for swallowing anything, and none of it is risk-free even applied to skin or fur.
What Is Actually Documented: Livestock and Crop Use
The parent page already establishes the outline: derris root and rotenone were farmed and traded from roughly the 1920s to the 1950s specifically for their insecticidal content, dusted onto livestock and crops as "derris dust," and used as a garden insecticide well into the mid-twentieth century. What this article adds is the trial-level detail behind that outline — which parts of it were actually tested, on what target, with what result.
Three separate application contexts show up in the literature, and they are worth keeping distinct because the evidence quality differs across them:
- Apiculture — rotenone as a treatment for Varroa destructor, the parasitic mite responsible for most managed-honeybee colony losses worldwide. This has the most recent and most rigorous trial data of the three.
- Livestock — rotenone dust, dips and washes against cattle ticks, sheep lice, sheep itch mite and general ectoparasite burden. Older literature, real field trials, mixed results depending on the specific target parasite.
- Crop protection — rotenone sprays and dusts against caterpillars, beetles and other agricultural pests, discussed in more depth on the regulatory history article, since this is the use that drove the pesticide registrations and later withdrawals.
Rotenone as an Acaricide: The Varroa Mite Evidence
Varroa destructor is an external parasitic mite that feeds on honeybees and transmits viral disease between them; it is the single biggest driver of managed-colony collapse in beekeeping worldwide, and beekeepers have tested a long list of acaricides against it, both synthetic and botanical. Rotenone is one of the botanical candidates, and it has been tested properly.
A 2003 Veterinary Parasitology trial evaluated rotenone alongside oxalic acid as alternative acaricidal treatments for Varroa destructor in honeybee colonies, and a 2008 Journal of Economic Entomology study followed up with new experimental data specifically on rotenone's use as a Varroa acaricide. Both are real controlled apicultural trials, not anecdote. This is arguably the best-evidenced external use of rotenone in the modern literature: a defined target parasite, a measurable outcome (mite drop or mite load), and a controlled comparison.
It is also, notably, an application with essentially zero relevance to human internal use. Bees are not mammals, a hive is not a body, and nothing about rotenone controlling a mite on an insect's exoskeleton says anything about oral safety in a person. The relevance here is narrow and specific: it is genuine, modern, trial-grade evidence for the external antiparasitic claim, which is exactly the claim this article is documenting.
Cattle, Sheep and the Ectoparasite Trials
The livestock literature is older — mostly 1960s through 1990s — and more mixed in its findings, which is worth reporting exactly as it appears rather than smoothing into a single "it works" line.
Cattle. A 1963 Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association paper reported a three-year evaluation of cattle lice eradication studies. A 2009 Brazilian field trial in the Revista Brasileira de Parasitologia Veterinária tested rotenone against Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus ticks in grazing crossbred calves, both in vitro and in experimentally infected animals: rotenone showed measurable acaricide action on tick larvae and engorged ticks, and cattle treated with rotenone were significantly less parasitised by horn fly than untreated controls in the rainy season. The same trial also tested fipronil in parallel and found it more broadly effective across tick, horn fly and screwworm larvae — rotenone's benefit in this trial was real but narrower than the modern comparator's.
Sheep. A 1994 Australian Veterinary Journal trial compared six shower-dip preparations against sheep lice (Bovicola ovis), including a formulation containing diazinon, piperonyl butoxide and rotenone together. All four emulsifiable-concentrate products in the trial — including the rotenone-containing one — fully eradicated the lice infestation over nine months of follow-up; the two wettable-powder products (coumaphos, magnesium fluorosilicate) did not, apparently because they wetted the fleece less thoroughly. This is a genuine positive result, and it needs one honest caveat attached: rotenone was tested only in combination with diazinon and piperonyl butoxide, never alone, so this trial cannot isolate how much of the effect is rotenone's own contribution. That is a formula-substitution problem in miniature — the same pattern this site flags whenever a multi-ingredient product is credited to one of its components without the dose or the individual contribution being disclosed.
A milk-residue study from 1968 measured rotenone alongside diazinon, coumaphos, Ciodrin and methoxychlor in cow's milk following treatments typical of dairy-cattle ectoparasite and fly control, confirming that even a topically applied, externally intended treatment leaves a measurable, trackable chemical residue — a fact that matters again in the oral-exposure article's discussion of how seriously to take "trace amounts."
One Trial Found No Benefit — Report It Anyway
A 1990 Australian Veterinary Journal field survey investigated sheep itch mite (Psorergates ovis) and its association with fleece derangement across 41 New South Wales flocks. It found a real, positive association between itch mite prevalence and fleece damage — but when it compared itch-mite populations and fleece derangement between untreated flocks and flocks treated with synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates, or arsenic and rotenone, it found no significant difference.
This site's doctrine on evidence quality treats "absent," "negative" and "old, weak and positive" as three different findings that should never be collapsed into one another. This is a genuine instance of the middle category: a real controlled field comparison, adequately conducted, that did not find a benefit for this specific target parasite. It sits alongside the Varroa and cattle-tick evidence above rather than replacing it — rotenone's antiparasitic action is real chemistry, demonstrated against several targets, and this trial is a reminder that "real chemistry" does not automatically mean "effective against every ectoparasite in every field trial." Reporting the negative result here, rather than only the positive ones, is the more honest and more useful thing to do with it.
The Human Topical Claim: Lice and Scabies
The parent page states plainly that derris preparations have been "dusted or washed onto livestock, dogs and poultry against lice, ticks, mites and fleas, and used on humans in some regions against scabies and head lice." That claim is genuine ethnobotanical and historical-pharmacognosy territory — rotenone-based preparations do appear in older pest-control and dermatology reference literature as topical pediculicides and scabicides, in the same general category as sulfur ointment, benzyl benzoate and other pre-modern topical parasiticides.
What this article can and cannot verify matters here. This site's citation policy requires every claim in a numbered research list to trace to a real, live-checked PubMed record. A systematic search of the indexed literature for Derris elliptica or rotenone specifically as a human pediculicide or scabicide — searches for "rotenone pediculicide," "rotenone scabicide," and "rotenone scabies" among others — returns no matching records. That is not the same as saying the traditional use is false. It is a specific, checkable finding: the modern indexed biomedical literature does not contain a dedicated clinical evaluation of jewel vine or rotenone as a human topical antiparasitic that this site can verify and cite.
Why the Human Evidence Is Thin, and What Replaced It
Per this site's evidence doctrine, "no trials found" is itself a finding, not a gap to wave away, and here it has a plausible, unremarkable explanation rather than a sinister one: rotenone-based pediculicides and scabicides were a pre-modern, pre-randomised-trial-era technology. By the time clinical pharmacology matured enough to run controlled trials of topical antiparasitics on human skin, synthetic alternatives — permethrin, malathion, and later ivermectin lotion — had already displaced botanical rotenone in the regions with the research infrastructure to run those trials. Permethrin in particular is now the first-line treatment for both scabies and head lice in most clinical guidelines, is cheap, and has a large modern safety and efficacy literature behind it. There was no strong commercial or public-health reason to fund a modern trial of a technology already being replaced.
That explanation matters because it changes what "no evidence" implies here. It is not that rotenone was tried against modern comparators and found wanting in a head-to-head human trial — that trial does not appear to exist either, in either direction. It is that the historical human topical use predates the modern clinical-trial infrastructure and was overtaken by cheaper, better-studied synthetics before that infrastructure caught up to it. A reader choosing between rotenone and permethrin for an actual case of scabies or head lice today is choosing between an unstudied historical remedy and a modern first-line treatment with a real evidence base — not between two equally-tested options.
Even "External Only" Has an Ingestion Pathway
A 1995 Veterinary Dermatology review by Nicholson surveyed toxicoses associated with botanically derived insecticides and skin-care/grooming products used on animals — pyrethrins, pyrethroids, rotenone, pennyroyal oil, d-limonene, linalool and melaleuca (tea tree) oil. Its finding on rotenone specifically: "ingestion of rotenone by licking may induce vomiting in dogs and cats." The review's overall conclusion was reassuring in tone — poisoning from these products is uncommon and generally results from concentrations stronger than the manufacturer recommends, and supportive care (bathing, symptomatic treatment) is usually adequate — but the specific rotenone finding is a precise illustration of a general point worth stating plainly: an animal that grooms itself converts a topical application into an oral exposure. "External use" describes how a product is applied, not how it necessarily ends up inside the body of the animal, or the person, handling it.
The parent page's cautions section already covers dermal absorption and respiratory irritation from rotenone dust in more general terms. This finding sharpens one specific version of that caution: a topical antiparasitic applied to fur is not sealed off from the gut the way a person might assume, and the mildness of the reported outcome here (vomiting, not systemic poisoning, at typical use concentrations) should not be read as evidence that concentrated ingestion is similarly mild — the poisoning case reports on the parent page describe what happens at genuinely concentrated oral doses, and they are not mild.
Mosquito and Snail Larvicide: The Environmental-Application Use
A third external-use category, distinct from both livestock treatment and human topical use, is environmental pest control: rotenone and derris extracts applied to standing water or crops against mosquito larvae, agricultural molluscs and stored-product insects. This is real, modern, and mostly Southeast Asian research, which makes sense given the plant's native range.
A 2022 study in the Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences tested the susceptibility of Aedes albopictus mosquito larvae — a dengue and chikungunya vector — to three types of Derris elliptica extract, and a 2020 study in the same journal (already cited on the parent page) evaluated tuba-root extract toxicity against Aedes aegypti larvae, the principal dengue vector. Both are genuine larvicide-efficacy studies with a public-health-relevant target (mosquito-borne disease control), not a therapeutic one. A separate 2010 study evaluated botanical insecticides, rotenone-containing preparations among them, against the golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata), a major rice-paddy agricultural pest across Southeast Asia.
These studies matter to this article because they extend the "external, non-ingestive, target-specific" pattern into a third domain — public-health vector control and crop-pest management — without changing anything about the plant's relationship to human internal use. They are also, not incidentally, part of the reason jewel vine continues to show up in ethnobotanical and pest-control research from the region: it is a real, locally available, and still-studied larvicide and molluscicide candidate, which is a legitimate ongoing research use, however far removed from "supplement."
What This Page Is Not Claiming
Refusing to overstate a claim runs in both directions, and it is worth being explicit about what this article does not assert:
- This is not a home-remedy recommendation. Nothing here should be read as instructions for using derris root, rotenone dust, or any homemade preparation against lice, scabies or mites on a person or a pet. Modern, better-studied, purpose-formulated products exist for every use case described above, and this site is not in a position to specify a safe concentration, exposure time or preparation method for an unregulated botanical pesticide.
- The livestock and apicultural evidence does not transfer to humans. A trial showing rotenone controls Varroa destructor on a bee's exoskeleton, or ticks on a calf's hide, says nothing about appropriate concentration, contact time or safety margin for human skin, let alone human scalp or genital skin where lice and scabies mites are actually found.
- External use is not risk-free use. Dermal absorption is a real route (see the parent page's cautions section), rotenone dust is a respiratory irritant, pigs are noted in the veterinary literature as unusually sensitive to rotenone preparations, and the grooming/licking pathway documented above shows that "external" and "cannot be ingested" are not the same claim.
- None of this bears on the oral-safety question. Whatever real efficacy rotenone has against an external parasite says nothing about whether it is safe to eat, drink or otherwise take internally. That question is addressed directly, and answered no, on the fish-stunning and oral-safety article.
Numbered Findings: What Is Not Known
- No modern controlled human trial of rotenone or derris preparations as a topical pediculicide or scabicide was located. The claim is historical and ethnobotanical; it has not been through the clinical-trial process that permethrin and malathion have.
- No standard, published safe concentration or contact time exists for human topical use. Every trial located here concerns bees, cattle, sheep, crops or mosquito larvae, not human skin.
- Rotenone's individual contribution in the sheep-lice combination trial cannot be isolated, since it was tested only alongside diazinon and piperonyl butoxide.
- No dermal-absorption pharmacokinetic study specific to rotenone in human skin was located, despite the practical importance of the question for anyone handling derris dust or formulated rotenone products.
- Comparative efficacy against modern first-line pediculicides and scabicides (permethrin, malathion, ivermectin lotion) has not been tested. There is no head-to-head trial in either direction.
Key Research Papers
Every citation below links a live, pre-validated PubMed search rather than a fixed record, so you see the current literature on the question. Species-specific queries are phrase-locked to keep Derris elliptica results separate from Derris scandens results.
- New experimental data on use of rotenone as an acaricide for control of Varroa destructor in honey bee colonies. Journal of Economic Entomology, 2008. PubMed search.
- Rotenone and oxalic acid as alternative acaricidal treatments for Varroa destructor in honeybee colonies. Veterinary Parasitology, 2003. PubMed search.
- Cattle lice eradication studies: a three-year evaluation. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 1963. PubMed search.
- Catto JB and colleagues. Grazing systems, rotenone and parasite control in crossbred calves. Revista Brasileira de Parasitologia Veterinária, 2009. PubMed search.
- Higgs AR, Love RA, Morcombe PW. Efficacy against sheep lice (Bovicola ovis) of six shower-dip preparations. Australian Veterinary Journal, 1994. PubMed search.
- Residues of diazinon, coumaphos, Ciodrin, methoxychlor and rotenone in cow's milk after ectoparasite and fly-control treatments. Journal of Economic Entomology, 1968. PubMed search.
- Johnson PW and colleagues. Prevalence of itchmite (Psorergates ovis) among sheep flocks with fleece derangement; no significant treatment effect for rotenone and arsenic. Australian Veterinary Journal, 1990. PubMed search.
- Nicholson SS. Toxicity of insecticides and skin-care products of botanical origin, including rotenone ingestion by licking in dogs and cats. Veterinary Dermatology, 1995. PubMed search.
- Susceptibility of Aedes albopictus larvae to the larvicidal activity of three types of Derris elliptica extract. Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences, 2022. PubMed search.
- Toxicity of botanical insecticides on the golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata). Communications in Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences, 2010. PubMed search.
- Effects of rotenone from derris crude extract on the esterase enzyme mechanism in the beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua). Communications in Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences, 2009. PubMed search — the insect-specific mechanism, distinct from the mammalian complex I story on the parent page.
A methodology note on absence: this site's citation policy requires every link in the list above to be a live-checked search that actually returns matching records — a search link returning nothing looks authoritative and is worse than no citation at all. In preparing this article, the searches "rotenone pediculicide," "rotenone scabicide," and "rotenone scabies" were each run live against PubMed and returned no matching indexed clinical evaluation. That absence is itself the finding reported in the "Why the Human Evidence Is Thin" section above, which is why it is stated here in prose rather than left as a clickable link to an empty results page.
External Resources
- PubMed — the index behind every search on this page.
- CDC — Head Lice — current first-line treatment guidance (permethrin, malathion and others), for comparison against the historical rotenone-based approach.
- CDC — Scabies — current first-line treatment guidance (permethrin cream, oral ivermectin).
- US EPA — Pesticide Ingredients — current registration status for rotenone.
- ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center — for suspected pesticide exposure in pets, including grooming-related ingestion.