Chicago ? Parents who paid $285 for an experimental head lice treatment for their children might be scratching their own heads, now that the doctor selling the stuff says it’s really a skin cleanser available for under $10 a bottle at drug stores nationwide.

Dr. Dale Pearlman got widespread media attention and skepticism from some head lice experts last year when the journal Pediatrics published his study detailing results with a product he called Nuvo lotion. He described it as a “dry-on suffocation-based pediculocide” and the first in a new class of nontoxic lotions for head lice.

And as of this weekend, his Web site still said the costly treatment was only available at his Menlo Park, Calif., office.

But now, in a letter to the editor for release today in December’s Pediatrics, Pearlman says the treatment “was actually Cetaphil cleanser,” available over the counter nationwide and abroad, and made by a company he has nothing to do with.

Pearlman acknowledged that he didn’t disclose the information until now “because I wanted to get rich” and had hoped pharmaceutical companies would offer him money to further develop a Cetaphil-based product for head lice. When that didn’t happen, he says, he decided to write the letter.

“I thought it would be so fun to make the world a better place by telling everyone about this,” he said in a phone interview.

He would not say how many patients had sought the treatment or how much money he’d made on it since his study was published. He said they were given bottles of Nuvo and were told the treatment was part of his research, but were not told they were getting Cetaphil.

Pearlman said his treatment should still be considered novel because it uses Cetaphil in a new way, having patients apply the lotion and dry it with a hair dryer to suffocate head lice.