Bizarre Morgellons condition: Is it real?

Mind or body?
Some doctors believe Morgellons is produced by the mind, not the body.

"I think of Morgellons as a piece of a larger phenomenon — delusional parasitosis," said Dr. Annette Matthews, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Delusional parasitosis is a psychosis in which sufferers believe they are infected with parasites. Often the patients have a real-life problem with scabies, lice, or some other tiny attackers, but then imagine they are continuing to plague them, Matthews said.

Asked about reports of multiple Morgellons cases within a family, Matthews said delusions are transmissible, the psychiatric term is "folie a deux," for instances in which people come to share a delusion.

Some people will biopsy themselves, or seek large quantities of antibiotics, herbal remedies, industrial bug killers and other expensive and potentially harmful treatments, she said.

The CDC's Rutz said there may be several subgroups among the people who identify themselves as Morgellons sufferers. One group may have delusional parasitosis, but another may have something else.

CDC task force investigates
The 12-person CDC task force includes two pathologists, a toxicologist, an ethicist, a mental health expert and specialists in infectious, parasitic, environmental and chronic disease. The group is developing a case definition of Morgellons.

It's impossible to say how many people have Morgellons without a commonly accepted way to define it. The Morgellons Research Foundation believes the number is at least 5,500, based on the number of families registered with the organization's Web site.

Hopefully, a CDC case definition will lead some physicians to stop treating Morgellons patients like they're crazy, said Smith, the Georgia pediatrician and a Morgellons sufferer.

"A lot of physicians think that if it's not in the textbooks, it's not real," said Smith, who said a fiber once slid across his eyeball and then burrowed in.

Verna Gallagher, 48, said she's been seeing a dermatologist for nearly a year. "(But) he doesn't believe in Morgellons. He said 'That's not a real thing,'" said Gallagher, of Roseville, Calif., near Sacramento.

But while her doctor dismisses the fibers as lint, Gallagher says he is concerned that she may become suicidal. "I cry, and he says I have to live my life" and tells her to write down things that she likes to do.

Meanwhile, she says she is plagued by tiny dark specks and fibers that infest her house. She's paid for exterminators, taken antidepressants, bathed in Borax and spent hundreds on vitamins, garlic pills and other potential remedies.

"Nothing's helped," she said.

MORE FROM MORE HEALTH NEWS

More Health News Section Front

Gene discovery may aid hunt for blindness cure HIV, cancer researchers win Nobel Mail carriers to bring drugs in anthrax attack World's heaviest man helps another obese man Study: Gender, race also smog factors Alternative energy source found — for the brain Car crash risk rises on election days, study says 1 in 4 chance McCain may not survive 2nd term Scientists identify narcolepsy gene VA quadruples payments to brain injured vets More Health News Section Front   Add More Health News headlines to your news reader: