By Dr Ananya Mandal, MD
A new study explains the controversial bizarre condition - Morgellons disease that is characterized by crawling sensations in the skin.
In response to increasing reports of Morgellons symptoms, scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed blood and skin samples from 115 patients in Northern California and found no evidence linking Morgellons to an infection or environmental cause. “We saw a growing number of people complaining about these unusual symptoms, and as a public health agency we felt the need to see what was going on,” said CDC spokesman Daniel Rutz. “It was important to rule out an infectious cause because a lot of people were concerned about transmission.” The study was published in the journal PLoS One.
“We believe that the suffering many people associate with this condition is best addressed by a careful objective scientific analysis,” Dr. Michele Pearson, with the CDC, explained during a 2008 conference call to announce the study.
Experts explain that Morgellons is not an official diagnosis but a syndrome of unexplained symptoms including abnormal sensations that sufferers describe as the feeling of insects crawling on the skin. Symptoms also include fatigue. And, perhaps most peculiarly, one symptom is tiny fibers found embedded in waxy scabs on the skin. “They're not alive,” said Rutz, referring to fear that the fibers are insects - or even alien matter. “They're pieces of cotton and other elements of clothing; common debris.” Roughly 40 percent of the skin samples showed signs of chronic irritation.
“These sores appear often to be the result of people picking at themselves, as they would if they had a chronic irritation that couldn't be resolved any other way,” said Rutz, adding that fibers likely slough off clothes and become encrusted in the healing wounds. The study finds that some drugs were detected in hair samples from half of the patients; and more than one-third of patients had a neuropsychiatric condition.