8 treatments to cure scabies 

The Basics of the Healthy Skin Program

Here’s the basic Healthy Skin Program to beat scabies:

• Apply a topical treatment weekly (0.9% spinosad, 5% permethrin, 10% sulfur, 25% benzyl benzoate, 1% ivermectin or Eurax)
• Take oral ivermectin once or twice weekly
• Run clothes through the dryer to kill off scabies mites and their eggs
• Treat a possible systemic bacterial infection caused by scabies mites
• Strengthen the immune system with a supplement called NAC

Why this treatment is needed

In the USA it can be hard to get treatment for scabies.

Some doctors don't recognize it, and some won't prescribe enough medication to cure it. When they do agree to treat you, they usually prescribe 5% permethrin cream. At a minimum one should have two applications of permethrin cream a week apart. But when I went to the doctor I could only get one tube and was told to check back two weeks later! Plus it was $80 a tube!

So I had two choices: make my own or try other treatments. I wound up trying many cures.

The five treatments are listed below.

I made my own 5% permethrin lotion, which was a lot cheaper. But that is an off-label use so I can't recommend anyone else doing what I did. You have to decide for yourself. Here is my description of how I made my own 5% permethrin lotion and my experience with using it.

5% permethrin cream is a prescription medicine, but sometimes you can find it online. Here’s a link to an Australian pharmacy. In the past most people who have scabies were cured with two treatments of 5% permethrin cream a week apart. But lately permethrin resistant scabies have been appearing. If you have tried permethrin and still have scabies, this could be why it wasn't cured.

The itching can persist even after the mites are dead, so you might not know if you are cured for a few weeks. The itching can even get a bit worse before it gets better.

There are at least five proven treatments for scabies. I want you to know what they are, where to get them, how to apply them and what results to expect. I also back up everything I write with references to scientific studies.

The 8 scabies treatments are:

0.9% Spinosad lotion

5% permethrin cream or lotion 

Ivermectin (oral)

1% Ivermectin lotion

Benzemul (benzyl benzoate) lotion 

Eurax (crotamiton) lotion or cream

10% sulfur lotion and

moxidectin, oral (a new addition since I started this website)

But if you have a stubborn case or have had scabies for a long time, it is best to do two different treatments at once.  A mite killing lotion on your skin and also oral ivermectin.

In addition, after a while scabies can produce a systemic bacterial infection that can be hidden, but fortunately can be easily cured.  

Also, it can be a great benefit to strengthen your immune system to help your body fight back.

How to choose a treatment

Of course you want the best scabies treatment: the strongest, easiest, cheapest, most effective and least irritating.  There is no one treatment that has all those qualities, so you have to decide what is most important to you. I made two things to help you choose. Here is a page that compares the treatments’s differences — their pros and cons. 

And here is a schedule of what you do each day during each treatment.

A mild case of scabies

The standard treatment for a mild case of scabies in the USA is 5% permethrin cream. Two applications of a skin cream or lotion a week apart cures most mild scabies cases.

What is a "mild case"? It's a recent case. It's where you just noticed the itch. It takes 4 to 6 weeks for the itch to show up after the scabies mites move in, so it isn't really a "new" infestation, but the itch is new for you.

No matter what you need to treat your laundry to kill any stray mites or their eggs. It’s simple to do: dry your laundry (clothes, sheets, pillow cases, etc.) on high heat until  they are completely dry (at least 30 minutes). Do NOT wash first. The hot, dry heat dries out and kills the scabies mites and their eggs. Hot water DOES NOT kill the mites and their eggs.

Another way is to simply not touch the laundry for over 3 days. The mites will simply die if they are off a human for more than a few days. So any clothes in a drawer or hanging or wherever will become mite free if they left untouched for a few days.

You can also spray your clothing or furniture to make it mite-proof.

 Please read this explanation about how to treat your laundry and furniture.

Stubborn cases

What is a "stubborn case"? It's a mature case. The itch has been around for more than a month. Maybe you tried some treatment and it "didn't work." It has probably spread to several locations. You might have infected sores (they have clear liquid or pus in them, there is red skin around them, they don't seem to heal).

The main difference in the treatment is how long it lasts. A mild case may be treated over 8 or 9 days. A stubborn case may need the full 29 day treatment.

Click here to see a timeline of schedules for treating mild and stubborn cases. 

Also, when I had a stubborn case, I did permethrin cream AND oral ivermectin each week. Plus, one week I did 10% sulfur cream for 3 days and another week I did Eurax lotion (10% crotamiton) on the "off days" (the days I wasn't applying the permethrin cream). The sulfur and Eurax lotions gave me "something to do" when I itched — plus they helped stop the itch and let me get some much needed sleep.

I also went in and got a prescription for antibiotics. It turns out the scabies mites produce a protein that lowers your body's ability to fight off certain bacteria. That means the bacteria can spread throughout your body and infect your sores from the inside. Read more information about scabies, bacterial infections and how to easily cure them here.

It's important you know there are several treatments for scabies. There are some permethrin resistant scabies mites so if one treatment doesn't work, there is still hope. If you get cured quickly, good for you! If you have a stubborn case, read about the various treatments and don’t give up hope.

If you can get enough tubes of 5% permethrin cream, and you take oral ivermectin, you will probably be cured. But as time goes by, the more I see that in the USA it can be impossible to get prescriptions for permethrin or ivermectin. And no one here is prescribing benzyl benzoate or sulfur lotion although they are used elsewhere in the world. If you were in France they’d likely give your oral ivermectin first. In Australia Benzemul (25% benzyl benzoate) is commonly used. I don’t know why permethrin lotion is the go-to treatment in the USA (if you can get a doctor to prescribe enough of it).

So a sufferer may wind up having to take control, learn all they can, get their own supplies and treat themselves.

I used prescription permethrin cream but I could only get a prescription for a small amount. So I made my own 5% permethrin lotion and used it. I even made a YouTube video showing what I did. But then the permethrin manufacturer threatened to sue me and sic the FDA on me so I took down the video. I put my description of how I made my own 5% permethrin lotion on my mange page because farmers and such use it to treat their animals. Dogs and humans carry different species of scabies mites, but the cure is the same (but humans use a much lower concentration of permethrin or sulfur than dogs or cows!).

The three treatments you can get pre-mixed without a prescription are benzyl benzoate lotion (Benzemul), 10% sulfur lotion and Eurax lotion (and cream). Eurax is very soothing and eases itching but Eurax alone isn't going to cure scabies. Eurax helps kill the mites some, but I think most folks will need to also do either sulfur lotion or Benzemul lotion on different days.

Lyclear (5% permethrin cream), Benzemul (benzyl benzoate lotion) and Eurax can be ordered from an Australian  English pharmacy and take about 10 days to arrive. I have ordered Benzemul from that Australian on-line pharmacy myself and it appears to be genuine (I have no connection to them and get no commission). Australia has real pharmaceutical controls and laws — I would not order products from India or China (even if they are on eBay or Amazon I don't trust them). Even pharmacies that claim to be in Canada are usually bogus. Please go to my individual pages on Benzyl Benzoate and Eurax for the latest links on where to get them.

You can order sulfur on Amazon and have it in tomorrow to get started treating yourself. Other studies (here and here) have shown that 10% sulfur lotion can cures scabies, and you don't need a prescription.

Also I took ivermectin horse paste because my doctor would only prescribe 2 doses of pills and I felt I needed seven doses (over 29 days). Ivermectin horse paste is only approved for treatment of animals such as horses, sheep and cattle. I experimented and treated myself as if I were an animal. You have to decide for yourself what you do for you. Click here for a YouTube video on how to measure doses of ivermectin horse paste.

Read the Healthy Skin Program booklet to see how they used both a topical skin lotions (such as permethrin, sulfur, Eurax or Benzemul) AND oral ivermectin to treat stubborn cases. On page 14 of that booklet they recommend: "Permethrin 5% cream OR benzyl benzoate 25% lotion (+/- tea tree oil 5%) plus oral ivermectin to kill scabies mites."

Other therapies

Because it comes up once in a while, here are my views on tea tree oil. There is almost no scientific proof tea tree oil works to cure scabies. Here is a study which indicates there simply isn’t enough evidence to use it to cure scabies. It might have some positive effects, but I would not count on it to cure scabies. Some treatments add tea tree oil to benzyl benzoate lotion, and it may help, but it is the benzyl benzoate that seems to be doing the real heavy lifting to cure scabies.

Borax can help to fight fungal infections, but hasn’t been shown to help to fight babies mites.