U.S. to Study Bizarre Medical Condition

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Care to repertorize this one Sheri??

U.S. to Study Bizarre Medical Condition

By MIKE STOBBE,

AP

Posted: 2008-01-16 14:57:30

ATLANTA (AP) - It sounds like a freakish ailment from a horror movie: Sores

erupt on your skin, mysterious threads pop out of them, and you feel like

tiny bugs are crawling all over you.

Some experts believe it's a psychiatric phenomenon, yet hundreds of people

say it's a true physical condition. It's called Morgellons, and now the

government is about to begin its first medical study of it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying

California-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente $338,000 to test and

interview

patients suffering from Morgellons' bizarre symptoms. The one-year effort will

attempt to define the condition and better determine how common it is.

The study will be done in northern California, the source of many of the

reports of Morgellons (pronounced mor-GELL-uns). Researchers will begin

screening for patients immediately, CDC officials said Wednesday. A Kaiser

official

expects about 150 to 500 study participants.

Morgellons sufferers describe symptoms that include erupting sores, fatigue,

the sensation of bugs crawling over them and - perhaps worst of all -

mysterious red, blue or black fibers that sprout from their skin. They've

documented their suffering on Web sites.

Some doctors believe the condition is a form of delusional parasitosis, a

psychosis in which people believe they are infected with parasites.

In the study, volunteers will get blood tests and skin exams, as well as

psychological evaluations, said Dr. Michele Pearson, who leads a CDC task force

overseeing the study.

Pearson suggested the study will help determine if Morgellons is the same as

delusional parasitosis or something new.

Study participants will be drawn from Kaiser's 3.4 million health insurance

customers living mainly in the Sacramento and San Francisco areas and as far

south as Fresno.

CDC officials acknowledged the study is limited and the results won't give a

complete picture of the problem.

Randy Wymore, an Oklahoma State University pharmacologist, who believes the

condition is not a psychiatric one, says there is distrust by some Morgellons

sufferers toward the new study.

Some of these patients who are Kaiser Permanente members have said they

don't like the way they've been treated by Kaiser doctors and probably won't

participate, said Wymore, who formerly was a research director for a patient

group and hears constantly from Morgellons patients.

" They felt that Kaiser was particularly unreceptive to treating them for

anything other than a psychiatric disorder, " said Wymore.

A Kaiser official said he had not heard such complaints. No patient will be

excluded from participation, even if a doctor previously determined the

problem was psychological, said Dr. Joe Selby, director of research for Kaiser

Permanente Northern California.

Kaiser researchers will look in their records for previous patients who in

the last 18 months reported Morgellons-like symptoms. They will be asked to

participate in more medical evaluations.

Any fibers or specks that are collected will be analyzed at the Armed Forces

Institute of Pathology, Selby said. Doctors who believe the condition is

psychiatric suspect fibers are likely just threads from clothing.

The CDC has been getting more than a dozen calls a week from self-diagnosed

Morgellons patients for well over a year, and was urged to investigate by

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and others.

Some say they've suffered for decades, but the syndrome did not get a name

until 2002, when " Morgellons " was chosen from a 1674 medical paper describing

similar symptoms.

On the Net:

CDC's Morgellons Web page: http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP

news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed

without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active

hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

01/16/08 14:56 EST

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