New study on Morgellons disease

[Guest guest]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22687124/

U.S. to study freakish ailment — is it real?

Morgellons patients describe erupting sores, fibers sprouting from skin

The Associated Press

updated 2:46 p.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 16, 2008

ATLANTA - 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.

________________________________________________________________________________\

____

Be a better friend, newshound, and

know-it-all with Mobile. Try it now.

http://mobile./;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ