Morgellons disease exists "only in patients' minds," study shows

A case patient from the study.

/ AP/CDC

(CBS/AP) What if it felt like there were tiny bugs crawling all over your body, causing oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin? That's how many people described their symptoms to government doctors several years ago, with health officials sometimes receiving up to 20 calls a day from sufferers.

Many of these people lived in California, prompting one of that state's U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein, to ask for a scientific study. In 2008, federal health officials began to study people who said they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons disease - named from a 1674 medical paper that described similar symptoms.

What did the long-awaited study conclude? Morgellons exists only in the patients' minds.

Sufferers of Morgellons describe symptoms including fatigue, erupting sores, crawling sensations on their skin, and mysterious red, blue or black fibers sprouting from their skin. Some say they've suffered for decades.

The study, published Jan. 25 in the journal PLoS One, cost nearly $600,000. It focused on more than 3 million people who lived in 13 counties in Northern California. After researchers went through Kaiser Permanente patient records, they flagged 115 people who had what sounded like Morgellons. That's the equivalent of roughly 4 out of every 100,000 Kaiser enrollees. "So it's rare," said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team. But when the researchers dug further to find a cause for the disease, they came up empty.

"We found no infectious cause," Eberhard said.

Most of the afflicted patients were middle-aged white women. One hundred of the patients agreed to answer survey questions and 40 consented to physical and psychological tests. The patients had no diseases, but more depression than the general public and were more obsessive about physical ailments, the study found.

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, HealthPop reported. The study concluded that the sores on many of them were caused by their own scratching and picking at their skin.

Even though no explanation was found, study author Felicia Goldstein, an Emory University neurology professor, said the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

She said perhaps the patients could be helped by cognitive behavioral therapy that might help them deal with possible contributing psychological issues.

The Mayo Clinic has more on managing Morgellons disease.

[pestilent1]

I have 2 friends with Morgellons, they say they have had it 11 years. They have the lesions and other issues as well. For a long time (4+ years) I thought it was a delusional issue or drug related issue. I got laid off years back and needed somewhere to stay and ended up at their house for a year, thats when I had a change of thought, I got morgellons after about 11 months living with them. I dont get the lesions, but I get the itching and the strange fibers and the stinging sensations. Its quite easy to prove that something is going on, Take some dry virgin olive oil and spread it over a morgellons sufferers skin and you will withing a minute (if not instantly) start seeing little black looking specks (some look like just a little bit of a whisker) emerging from their skin, if thats not enough, take those specks and look at them under a microscope and you will see they are not solid but are a mass of extremely tightly entwined and tangled fibers (most fluoresce quite abit). The fibers are strange in themselves, they are usually blue,or green or clear some look completely sylinderical and like they are full of something and others are flattened like they have lost whatever fluid was in them. definitley tubes of some sort..very strange to say the least.
Back to this "study" hmmm how often is it that medical studies are dont with out a "control" group or in the very least a "blind" group? the whole study reads funny to me very carefully worded and no absolute statements made..seems like lots of half truths could be in it to me. but i guess that comes with the whole delusional aspect of this might as well be paranoid as well.

[rwsmith29456]

Do they think that the people are inflicting sores upon themselves?? Are the fibers documented as to existing or not? This article scares me because I had a period where I thought I had a worm infestation. After some anti-hallucination meds (again risperdal) I got better and realized that yes, for a while there I was really delusional (crazy. I also swing between moderate and severe depression which is mentioned in the article.

[AnnieDanny]

What I think is disgusting and DISGRACEFUL is all the people who mock those who suffer with Morgellons. Shameful. I think all the mocking that goes on, online, is one of the most repulsive and disgusting social phenomenons I have ever witnessed. Mocking politics, mocking people with diseases, mocking religions. People say things they should never say.

Some day those who mock may need a little sympathy and caring from somebody, and they may not get an ounce of TLC from anybody. Call it Karma or "you reap what you sow" or whatever. I think people should be careful what they say.

[ChristinaHare]

CAT LICE: I have had this condition and I feel I know the cause. My mother first had it, for three years. She was a cat-lover, with three cats that slept with her, but she had a skin irritation that left her covered with little red skin-pricks. In fact, they were so itchy that she would dig at them with a pin or a needle. I took her to a major medical institution that specialized in dermatology. They found nothing, after carefully examining the skin for signs of any kind of infection or infestation -- just red marks on her skin. They took me in another room and gave me an article on older women who imagined infestations -- a psychiatric abnormality. I was angry at this indifference to an obvious physical condition. Later, as my mother was dying of cancer, she made me promise to take her youngest cat home with me. I took her Little Red into our home. Suddenly I began itching too. I asked my medical provider, Kaiser Permanente, for help. They examined my skin, scraping it and examining the scrapings with a microscope, and found nothing. I went crazy, with the sensation of tiny insects crawling on my skin. Couldn't it be my cat? Cat lice? No, cat lice are so tiny that they can't bore into human skin; and, there's no evidence of them. A month later I was going crazy. I applied skin creams provided by Kaiser and finally began bathing my skin with kerosene. Nothing worked. Finally I went to my cat's doctor. Could cat lice be the cause? No, because they're too small, my vet said. But the next day she called back. I found an article in my vet medical guide. It says that, while cat lice can't bore through the skin, they can make dry holes, and typically they make three or four holes, in a row. They then die and shrivel on the skin, without leaving any evidence that they've been there; but the holes become infected, causing a pruritic manifestation. I was elated! I noticed many tiny sores in rows. Extremely itchy. Out went the cat! The condition disappeared in a week. Mostly middle-aged women? What percentage of Morgellons sufferers have cats?

[artjoephilly]

Coinciding with the existence of these fibers is another phenomenon: a persistent and non-dissipating exhaust produced by a very small percentage of jet aircraft that, to my observation, became explosively obvious in the last two year here in PA. Oddly, few notice the tic-tac-toe pattern mess regularly made of our sky's that result often in a lingering, silver cloud spay-paint covering. While not suggesting the two are related, it's hard to justify questioning one and not the other.

[carolynburgess]

This was the same thing doctors said 15 or 20 year ago about Fibromyalgia, that it was a figment of the imagination of those with the condition. How come whenever something afflicts mostly women, doctors determine it is a mental illness?

[caljack430]

Because humans as a whole are scared of things that have no cause or explanation. Rather than admit that some illness can culture itself and grow without cause, they decide to blame it on the 'ailing psyche' of the patients. Then its nothing for them to worry about it.

[julianpenrod]

In fact, disease causation can be linked to violations of God's wishes, but is more involved than qofthes suggests. Heart disease comes from a constant policy of deceit and lies. Alzheimer's relates to a career of back-stabbing, even to malicious gossip, which is why it steals the ability to retain what you would use against others. In the extreme of genuinely evil ruining of how people think about things, a stroke can result. Diabetes can express itself with loathsome, dirty manifestations of personal decay and coincides with a generally dirty, petty way of living. Cancer occurs in cases of overall contempt for humanity, like a crawling contagion. And dieseases like cold or flu derive from lack of faith in God. And, since all sin begin with lack of faith in God, that's why all diseases tend to begin with "cold and flu like symptoms".
Shills will say that a number of chemicals and treatments can actually fight diseases. If diseases are a penance for corrupt behavior, why does God allow various alternatives to cure them. There is always the possibility that, seeing the fault of their actions, recognizing their illness is a manifestation of cravenness, individuals might want to repair their lives. But, the hardship of the disease they brought on themselves can make it hard for them to concentrate enough to undo the damage they did in the world. So God gives them a way out, an alternative to totally repairing their characters immediately, giving them the alternative to be cured after which they can improve themselves.
That also, however, brings in a different topic. That, in fact, diseases can be caused by man. But, if God is dissatisfied with the way someone is living, He can withhold protection from the sources of the disease. "Morgellon's" is not necessarily related to the manifestation as far back as the 1600's. It sounds much like a result of contaminants in the air today affecting someone, particularly by contributing to the building of the fibers seen to emanate from many sufferers' skin. Contaminants in the air can very likely be the result of the program of indoctrinating the earth's atmosphere with chemicals to facilitate weather modification that has come to be called "chemtrails". Chemtrails has already coincided with eminent anomalous perverting of the world's weather, this seems a side effect. It certainly sounds like a case of substances in the air crystallizing out. And those stricken with the disease may have committed some sin which caused God to remove the protection from the effects of chemtrails.
There is a significance, however, in the fact that CBSNews' website front page carries the tag line "Morgellons disease still a mystery, study finds", while the article associated with that tag line has the headline, "Morgellons disease exists 'only in patients' minds', study shows"!

[lloydbest1]

Has anyone considered this might be an autoimmune condition? Perhaps OTC cortisone is all it takes. In any case I saw no mention it's been tried....

[qofthes]

EVERY DIS--EASE is, just like the Virus in your perfectly working computer, which came in perfect working order and according to its SOURCE CODE, Of The Mind.

The FDA Placebo test itself even proves that.

Example:

Arthritis - individual mind is overly critical.
"Heart-Disease" - Lack of (self)love.
Skin problems - something, or some one got under ones skin.
Cancer - ongoing conflict, hateful thoughts, misunderstanding or non-existing principle, "********" of mind in not keeping promises, contracts...

[dorasm]

This simply isn't that hard. E-mail me at [e-mail] with a subject heading I'll spot, and we'll arrange for you to send me samples of these strange fibers and whatnot sprouting from the sores - I have a good college level microscope.

That CDC doctors didn't atleast account for that one, with photos of microscopy of what these fibers really are, makes it clear they did poor research and didn't take the matter seriously - whether Morgellons is real or not. If the fibers aren't anything that is obviously very easy to prove.

Dora