Federal study of Morgellons yields no answers
istockphoto
ATLANTA - Imagine having the feeling that tiny bugs are crawling on your body, that you have oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin. Sound like a horror movie? Well, at one point several years ago, government doctors were getting up to 20 calls a day from people saying they had such symptoms.
Many of these people were in California and one of that state's U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein, asked for a scientific study. In 2008, federal health officials began to study people saying they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons.
The study cost nearly $600,000. Its long-awaited results, released Wednesday, conclude that Morgellons exists only in the patients' minds.
"We found no infectious cause," said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team.
The study appears in PLoS One, one of the Public Library of Science journals.
Sufferers of Morgellons describe a variety of symptoms, including fatigue, erupting sores, crawling sensations on their skin and — perhaps worst of all — mysterious red, blue or black fibers that sprout from their skin. Some say they've suffered for decades, but the syndrome wasn't named until 2002, when "Morgellons" was chosen from a 1674 medical paper describing similar symptoms.
Afflicted patients have documented their suffering on websites and many have vainly searched for a doctor who believed them. Some doctors believe the condition is a form of delusional parasitosis, a psychosis in which people believe they are infected with parasites.
Last May, Mayo Clinic researchers published a study of 108 Morgellons patients and found none of them suffered from any unusual physical ailment. The study concluded that the sores on many of them were caused by their own scratching and picking at their skin.
The CDC study was meant to be broader, starting with a large population and then went looking for cases within the group. The intent was to give scientists a better idea of how common Morgellons actually is.
They focused on more than 3 million people who lived in 13 counties in Northern California, a location chosen in part because all had health insurance through Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, which had a research arm that could assist in the project. Also, many of the anecdotal reports of Morgellons came from the area.
Culling through Kaiser patient records from July 2006 through June 2008, the team found — and was able to reach — 115 who had what sounded like Morgellons. Most were middle-aged white women. They were not clustered in any one spot.
That led to the finding that Morgellons occurred in roughly 4 out of every 100,000 Kaiser enrollees. "So it's rare," Eberhard said.
Roughly 100 agreed to at least answer survey questions, and about 40 consented to a battery of physical and psychological tests that stretched over several days.
Blood and urine tests and skin biopsies checked for dozens of infectious diseases, including fungus and bacteria that could cause some of the symptoms. The researchers found none that would explain the cases.
There was no sign of an environmental cause, either, although researchers did not go to each person's house to look around.
They took fibers from 12 people, which were tested at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Nothing unusual there, either. Cotton and nylon, mainly — not some kind of organism wriggling out of a patient's body.
Skin lesions were common, but researchers concluded most of them were from scratching.
What stood out was how the patients did on the psychological exams. Though normal in most respects, they had more depression than the general public and were more obsessive about physical ailments, the study found.
However, they did not have an unusual history of psychiatric problems, according to their medical records. And the testing gave no clear indication of a delusional disorder.
So what do they have? The researchers don't know. They don't even know what to call it, opting for the label "unexplained dermopathy" in their paper.
But clearly, something made them miserable. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," said Felicia Goldstein, an Emory University neurology professor and study co-author.
She said perhaps the patients could be helped by cognitive behavioral therapy that might help them deal with possible contributing psychological issues.
The study is not expected to be the last word on the subject.
Among those with additional questions is Randy Wymore, an Oklahoma State University pharmacologist who for years was the most reputable scientist to look into it and who has concluded Morgellons is not a psychiatric disorder.
On Wednesday, Wymore said he had not seen the CDC paper and was unable to comment on it. But when the study began, he questioned whether Kaiser patients with Morgellons would participate, especially if they were unhappy with how they were previously handled by their Kaiser doctors.
"There is always the question: How many of the study participants actually have Morgellons Disease?" he said, in an email.
The CDC is not planning additional study, however. The agency's expertise is in infectious diseases and environmental health problems, and the researchers saw no evidence of that.
"We're not mental health experts," one CDC spokeswoman said.
Popular in Health
- Feet come first when it comes to body parts with most fungi
- Surgeons remove 4-pound hairball from tiger 10 Photos
- Cause of Alabama mystery illness cluster determined
- Heartburn raises throat cancer risk but antacids may help
- Airway made by 3D printer saves infant's life
- Skin cancer self-exam: What to look for (PHOTOS)
- Surgeons remove 4-pound hairball from 400-pound tiger
- Mysterious respiratory disease infects 7 in Ala., 2 dead
Prion synergy is not a death sentence unless they refuse to treat. The only difference between Autism SD/MS/ALS/etc. etc. is the infections that have folded their genes into ours and other organisms and how many....
And it is not now uncommon to find 15 infections in some syndromes such as ALS/Parkinson's by ref. labs who know how to find them.
http://www.molecularalzheimer.org/
And the same reason they refuse to treat Alzheimers when they know what's causing it...Organisms that can shape shift and swap their genes, not only with us and other organisms but with Agrobacteriums as well...We will not lay down and die for the money changers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDF0UQqIL34
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3PS3yGX_fU&feature=related
http://www.godsciencebook.com/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22274922
They are able to permanently absorb other infectious organisms genes to hide in the body..So these antibody/antigen tests we have been given don't work unless you kill some first. And why the WHO banned the TB test after thousands are sickened and die after giving a TB and HepB vaccine in Poland and Ukraine.
Because most of these infections do not live in the blood and if they are not in the sample they won't be seen. They prefer the tissue.
So they have profitted for the last 36 yrs. of lies in the discovery of AIDS/LYME/MADCOW within 4 yrs. of each other----and then implemented the NVICP to be sure they didn't have to pay for any of them...Because the prions caused by using the genetically altered organisms usually takes more time than the black box they say you must fit into....
http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&news_item=5467
Parkinsons is the proteins
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2334308?dopt=AbstractPlus
ALS is the proteins
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22276094
MS is the proteins
Etc. Etc. Etc. All for profits....
All the infections can be killed to get them their lives before too much neuronal damage is done and stem cells are proving to turn the immune systems back on...We do not have time to wait on more stupid. They knew this from the get go and did nothing to stop it. Einstein said if anything happened to our Bee's we would have but 4 yrs. How many Autism babies must you have before you do something? How many Alzheimers? How many MS/ALS/Parkinsons/Lupus/Crohns/Arthritis/etc. etc.? Give us a number so we won't annoy you when the amount of money you spend to fix people is more than you make...
If it was nothing why would the CDC contract Kaiser to find the origin and cause and publish a prelim. finding of a fungus related to tree fungus, decode over 100,000 of their patients and employee's to find something to profit from, and then let the CDC/Mayo/Kaiser tell you its nothing? LOL
Because you cannot profit from a prion that can swap its genes in the blow of the wind to perpetually infect and remain hidden from the tests we have been given.
And Because they are all lying crooks who should all be in jail not living off of the suffering of millions in their failures to treat and their failures to diagnose...These people don't even know how to induce an exit, or been able to give us a blood test for prion synergy, so this is really just how stupid they are...
They won't be seen sitting on the skin fools. They live inside the depressed immune systems we have been blessed with caused by injecting genetically altered ecoli and mycoplasma which is proven to be highly expressed in prion formation. In fact they are now using it to be able to study it---now that the informations are shared.
Many if not most patients don't even know they have it until the depressed immune system fails them completely and they take over producing the lesions.
Or the patient finally gets a diagnosis of a stealth infection after many prior diagnosis' of a syndrome of unknown origin and undergoes long term antibiotics in which they fiercely exit.
And is the cause of all of our massive Vitamin D deficiency epidemic as well because they live in the skin.
You can produce an exit with an acid such as lemon, dawn dish det. coconut oil, even animal wormer paste. A pea size amount on palms and between toes are most prolific. After washing air dry, then apply and look and wait for exit within a couple mins. you will see them. They will then exit as fiber like organisms of red, white, black, blue, and black dots.
Many of these patients also have many other phenomena exit upon treatment. They can only be seen with a micromagnifying glass not ordinary glass and many undulate in an inchworm fashion.
And it is in all Syndromes including the suffering of Autism exposure to sun and Alzheimers of which they deny treatment for their stealth infections as well.
The President is right on overhauling the system, but the first thing we must do is get all the crooks out who control profits by denying that we have massive prion synergy infecting the masses formerly known as AIDS/MadCow, and because of their lies to keep it hidden is now being dissiminated in our vectors of disease in which the infectious organisms they carry now carry the prion abilities to swap genes with us and other organisms, but Agrobacteriums as well. And why we sit with NO blood test to detect not only it but now many organisms that share their genes. Fact is they are too good to mess with it---fine but don't deny the rights of the patients by denying its existance to get the people the help they need.
These horrendous lies to protect profits by the ignorance and greed to not get the people the help we need to stop our global destruction will be seen in the history of man as the worst Crimes Against Humanity that has ever been wrought on the globe. What is going on today has no comparison to the injustices at the hands of man.
Because it is not only in the people, it is in our feed animals, our pets, and it is in the Bee's called Colony Collapse Disorder, and found in Bats called White Nose Bat Syndrome. As other countries already work to cure and put forth every word in a global effort freely as service to man---the US once again sides with the corporations who caused it in the first place. Big Pharma is just another Big Banks, Big Oil Failures the people must suffer for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZXDeOa0kaw&feature=related
"Though normal in most respects, they had more depression than the general public and were more obsessive about physical ailments"
That's like observing that things that fall in the water get wet.
Is there any sane person in the world who would experience these symptoms over years and not get a little depressed and a little obsessed with their ailments and anything that even might be related? When the doctors dismiss you as nuts and you realize you are on your own to fix it you had better get a little more obsessive about your help if you want anything fixed.
One thing I've found with doctors is that their diagnostic ability is completely worthless unless it fits their little connect the dots methods or you can take a test or a picture of something. If you have anything that hasn't been beat to death by the media you might as well forget the doctors and figure it out yourself.