The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that it is launching a study to learn about an unexplained condition that causes people to feel as if they have foreign substances growing from their bodies.
People with the condition, referred to as Morgellons disease, say they have fibers and other inorganic material growing out of their skin.
“We earnestly want to learn more about this unexplained illness, which affects the lives of those who suffer from it,” said Dr. Michele Pearson, principal investigator leading the study for the CDC, in a press release. “Those who suffer have questions, and we want to help them.”
“We have a team of epidemiologists, laboratorians and pathologists to carry out the study,” Pearson said.
The study will be conducted in conjunction with Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Division of Research. For more information, CLICK HERE to visit the CDC’s Unexplained Dermopathy Web site.
In 2006, a number of Morgellons sufferers told ABC News in interviews that when they consulted doctors, they received diagnoses they called wrong or dismissive. Brandi Koch, the wife of former Major League Baseball player Billy Koch, said that she felt as if she were living in a horror movie, claiming she had colored fibers coming out of her skin.
Koch, of Clearwater Beach, Fla., said that her life was good until one day in the shower when she noticed something strange — tiny fibers running through her skin.
“The fibers look like hair, and they’re different colors,” Koch said.
Koch said she knows that what she experienced “sounds crazy,” but it’s true. “If I had a family member call me up and say, ‘I have this stuff,’ I’d say, ‘I’m sending a straitjacket over. You need some help,'” she said.
Anne Dill described a similar condition. Looking at Dill’s life in Florida, she seemed to be living the American dream — her three daughters excelled in sports and were straight-A students.
But life in the Dill household was far from idyllic. Anne’s 40-year-old husband, Tom, died in January 2006, and she believes his death was due to a contagious illness that has infected her entire family.
Dill described her family’s skin: “There’s this fibrous material. It’s in layers.” Dill said the skin on their hands was particularly bad, very swollen and itchy, and said it felt as if bugs were crawling underneath the skin.
Consulting Doctors
Dr. Greg Smith of Gainesville, Ga., has been a pediatrician for the past 30 years. He claimed that a fiber was coming out of his big toe, and he had video footage to prove it.
“It felt like somebody stuck a pin in my toe and wiggled it, and it just continued to hurt,” Smith told ABC News in 2006.
He said he never thought he had bugs. “I’ve certainly had those crawling sensations, and the fibers which come out of the skin are really bizarre, and really odd.”
Smith was handed over to a hospital psychiatrist when he went to the emergency room complaining of a fiber in his eye. He admits that he, too, would be skeptical if a patient came to him with the same story.
“I would wonder if they’d taken their medicine that day. It makes no sense. It’s totally bizarre. It’s something that — just telling the story is so outlandish on the face of it — that no one would believe it,” Smith said. Dill’s doctor told her to stop scratching, even though many of her sores were in places she could not reach.
Koch went to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors didn’t believe that the fibers she’d brought them had grown from her body.
“I saw the infectious disease doctor, and I showed him some samples that I had and he snickered,” she said. “I can’t go through another doctor blowing me off or looking at me like I’m crazy. I know I’m not.”
Dr. Vincent DeLeo, chief of dermatology at New York’s St. Lukes-Roosevelt Medical Center, weighed in on what he’d say to someone who came to him with this condition. “I don’t think this is any different than many patients I’ve seen who have excoriations and believe that there is something in their skin causing this,” he told ABC News in 2006.
DeLeo said the open lesions were most likely a result of scratching the skin.
Relying on Your Own Research
But biologist Mary Leitao refused to accept the medical skepticism surrounding Morgellons.
Leitao’s son, Drew, was just 2 years old when Leitao noticed an odd sore on his lip that would not heal.
“He very simply said ‘bugs,’ and he pointed to his lips,” said Leitao.
Leitao never expected to find herself at the center of a medical storm. But when her son complained about the strange sore, the biologist, who once ran the electron microscope at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, did what any scientist would do. She took a closer look.
“What I saw were bundles of fibers, *** of fibers,” Leitao says. “There was red and blue.” Even stranger, they glowed under ultraviolet light.
Armed with research, Leitao took her son to a doctor at one of the country’s leading hospitals. He dismissed her tale of fibers and wrote to her pediatrician, saying that her son needed Vaseline for his lips and that his mother needed a thorough psychiatric evaluation.
Undaunted, Leitao began poring through medical literature looking for clues. What she discovered was a 17th-century reference to a strange disease with “harsh hairs” called “Morgellons.”
She named the strange fibers Morgellons disease and put the information on a Web site, Morgellons.org. At the time of her interview in 2006, more than 4,500 people had contacted Leitao, claiming they had Morgellons-type symptoms. The name stuck, and the disease was featured on the television show “ER.”
But do these fibers grow from inside the body, as Morgellons patients believe, or do they come from the external environment — a kind of lint — as the medical skeptics say?
Searching for an Answer
Forensic scientist Ron Pogue at the Tulsa Police Crime Lab in Oklahoma checked a Morgellons sample against known fibers in the FBI’s national database. “No, no match at all. So this is some strange stuff,” Pogue said in 2006. He thought the skeptics were wrong. “This isn’t lint. This is not a commercial fiber. It’s not.”
The lab’s director, Mark Boese, said the fibers are “consistent with something that the body may be producing.” He added that, “These fibers cannot be manmade and do not come from a plant. This could be a byproduct of a biological organism.”
Dill said she looks at pictures of her family and finds them unrecognizable. “My kids have to see not only their dad but their mom disintegrating, and that’s gotta be really scary.”
While they wait for evidence that they hope will convince the medical community to take them seriously, some Morgellon’s sufferers wear pink bracelets that say, simply, “Fortitude.”
Pictures of Morgellons Disea
Pictures can be viewed at the following location: Morgellon’s Disease Pictures
Hope you enjoyed the story and pictures of Morgellons Disease
To the above poster:
Just because one person has said things like that, does not mean anyone else has said anything close to that. Go to the CDC site, and read about it for yourself.
Go to the University of Oklahoma, and read what Professor Randy Weymore has to say about it. Go to the Mayo Clinic’s site, and don’t bother coming back to this one? The people here need help and support, not ridicule. You must now be aware that when you do something like that, you set yourself up for a worse thing to happen. I pray it doesn’t.
you people have wackos on here talking about tiny creatures living in your uara and hearing them speaking to you, but we are supposed to not believe that you are f*%king crazy. ……….right. the only disease involved here is a mental one.
Dear Dylnn,
From what you have described, it does sound like it is. Do you need someone to talk to? I’ve lived with this for the past 3 years now, after much grief, finally found a site that had my symptoms. Mostly what you have just described. I had already panicked and sold all of my new furniture and heirlooms to move, thinking I had bird mites. After moving, I came to the sorry discovery that I was bringing them with me just by being here!
It can get better. I once had a ton of blue dust made of fibers all over my place. Now there is very little to be seen at all. The healthy you can eat, the better.The cleaner you keep your home, the better. But as we all do, you should to have a person to talk to when you want to or need to.
If you want to, we can talk on the phone.
You will be in my prayers,
All of you!
Anne
I’ve been reading about Morgellons for about a month and am posting here to get input. I’ve had similar symptoms but have been told by a poster here, who I emailed privately, that it doesn’t sound like Morgellons. Please bear with me for the length of this post. I’ve only been symptomatic for a few months; this is all new to me and I’m just trying to figure out how it happened and what to do about it. Until a month and a half ago, had been treating myself for head lice, and at the insistance of a doctor, for scabies. What I initially thought was that I’d picked up head lice on vacation. I began to itch all over and my scalp felt crawly. I chocked up the itchiness to my eczema and assumed head lice. I began to treat as soon as I returned home. I’m single and basicaly have two full-time jobs, one a daytime “normal” job, and the other as a live-in companion to an elderly person. Because of my schedule, I couldn’t have someone check my hair daily so I thought the slow improvement was because I wasn’t getting all the eggs. When I was checked three times, however, no one found any eggs in my hair. But things were crawling, the crawling sensation had expanded to other areas of my body, including pubic, and it felt like things were dropping from my hair to my shoulders. I began to find black particles, especially on my hands and arms, but also on clothing, and what seemed to be tiny cream-colored eggs. Sometimes they were soft and intact, sometimes open at one end and sometimes hard like a grain of salt. Once in a while, I’d find what looked like glitter. They’d land on my face, my shoulders and my clothing. I still thought I had a lice infestation and that the black particles were insect debris. In addition, I was being stung. I’d feel a sharp sting and there would be either a black particle or a cream-colored egg at the site. I began finding what I called “cacoons” of fuzz inside my clothing and bra at sting sites. It looked like something had made a cacoon of fabric fibers and was stinging me from inside. Usually these were white, sometimes pale blue, with a little black and red or navy mixed in. At one end, the stinging end, there was a black or grey place. I thought some insect was forming it and stinging me. But there isn’t any known parasite that does that. (Researching that on the internet is what led me to the Morgellons information.) I sat directly under a heating / ac vent at work, so just in case, I moved to the other workspace in my office. I brushed my hair over the sink several times a day and was finding tiny grey, black and red things which, under no magnification, seemed to have the shape of lice. So I continued to treat. I’d also begun to find tiny blood-spots all over my body, or rather an increase of them. In 1984 I’d been treated with megace to shrink fibroid tumors. It caused me to have benign skin tumors that begin as tiny blood spots. Suddenly I was developing these red spots all over very quickly, but they weren’t changing. I was itchy, but not as I’ve heard it described. It was bearable and still is, thankfully, so I can refrain from scratching. The two times I have scratched even lightly, I immediately developed a rash that lingered for days. I bought a RobiComb, since nothing else was working. That’s an electronic comb that’s supposed to zap lice and eggs with an electrical current. All I was zapping was myself; it was really uncomfortable. I found no bugs, but what was coming out in the comb were plenty of egg-bits, similar to what I’d found on my clothes and face, and white fuzz. I had to clean the comb after each pass-through because the comb was covered in what looked like very fine white fuzz. I wear virtually no white except for underwear. My towels aren’t white, either. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Night after night, I was finding this stuff covering the RobiComb. I began to find all manner of strangely shaped things coming out of my hair. I couldn’t explain any of it. I go from home to office and back again most days. My outings consist of dinner, the mall and WalMart. It’s not as though I hang out in trees. I bought a 10x magnifier. The “lice” weren’t lice at all. They were miniscule oval bunches of what looked like threads. They looked like miniature versions of what I kept finding in my bra and underwear where my clothing is snug that was stinging the crud out of me. They look like pictures I’ve seen of microsopic Morgellons formations, but these aren’t microcopic at all; they’re quite visible. I also found black and red “threads.” On a couple of occasions I found tiny brownish black worms. Twice I’ve found what looked like black dots in my bra and under 10x magnification, they’ve turned out to be curled up worms. I check everything before I put it on and have gotten in the habit of removing all fuzzballs. I use a vinegar rinse in my laundry to minimize fuzz and sanitize. I’ve washed in hot water or drycleaned everything since the beginning when I thought it was lice. I never wear anything more than once. These weren’t in my bra that morning and I have no idea how they could have travelled there without my feeling it. Yesterday I found these on a plastic bag in which I’d stored clothes. Last week one of the red spots “erupted” for want of a better term, and left a small crater. I didn’t see it happen, just saw the end result, so I don’t know if anything came out of it. It’s in a place on my arm that I can’t look at under the magnifier, too close to my shoulder. With the naked eye, I see nothing unusual about it. Fortunately, so far these spots are small and don’t itch. They look like tiny bug bites and maybe a beginning eczema spot. I began to use tape to check my skin and there are lots of tiny thread-like things there but they don’t seem to be attached. I’ve noticed a major decline in my mental abilities and memory, but that may be part of the normal aging process (I’m 57). It makes me crazy, though, because I make ridiculous mistakes at work and constantly forget what I’m doing and why. My vision is changing rapidly, too, which could also be age-related. I got new glasses last June and had to replace them recently because my sight has declined so rapidly. The sensation of things crawling on me is unnerving. It’s mostly “on” and not “in” except for two spots, my eyebrows. Two or three times every day, I begin to feel something moving, disturbing hairs. I find nothing there. Then I feel a “fullness” (best way I can describe it) behind and underneath my brows. Then cream-colored things are around my eyes, on my face. They’ve gotten in my eyes and nose and in the corners of my mouth before I finally saw a pattern and could respond immediately. I don’t know whether they’re eggs or the actual insect or whtever it is. This is accompanied by a mild anaphalactic reaction; slight swelling of the lips and throat, breathiness, shakiness and all-over itch. At first I tried slathering in vasaline and that didn’t help. Then I thought I’d smash the little suckers and pressed hard against my brow bones. That actually seemed to work for awhile. Then I started putting neosporin cream on that area and it slows it down as well. I thought all this was new, but maybe it’s not. For several years I’ve had a trianglular spot between my shoulder blades that was numb, supposedly from nerve damage from a car accident 35 years ago. At night, that area would “wake up” and feel crawly. I’d go nuts, the itch was so bad and so deep. When I’d use a back scratcher, the itch would move. It did feel as though something were moving under the skin, but I attributed it to neuropathy. Strangely, since all this started in October, that spot hasn’t itched, even though it had been a nightly thing for several years. I’m beginning to wonder if it just escaped! The other thing is related to the black spots and worms. Last summer my dog started tracking black things into my bed at night. Little black dots, little black curved things and other black debris. She doesn’t go outside at all. She has a seizure disorder; when I adopted her she was found to have both Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Erlichea Canus, both tickborne diseases, that cause frequent grand mal seizures. I keep her inside and diaper her. (It was either that or put her down.)The vet said the black stuff was probably her pads disintegrating from age. I didn’t quite buy that and eventually banished her to the floor. But the black things kept turning up in bed. (Recently I stopped sleeping in the bed because of bites and now sleep in my leather recliner.) One more incident happened with the black things that made me wonder if it weren’t related to mold. When I was preparing for vacation, I put a brand-new tote in the washer. It had white plastic on the inside, the exterior was probably some kind of rayon. It was clean inside when I packed it. In it I packed my dog’s water bowl, leash, (which we rarely use since she doesn’t go outside often,)a couple of magazines, a water bottle full of water, a roll of paper towels and my cell phone earbuds. I put the tote on the floorboard of the front passenger side the night before leaving. I didn’t look in it until about 10am the next day on the road when I was going to give water to my dog. The inside of the tote and everything in it was covered in black specks. Not a few here and there, but covered. I have no idea where they came from and I wish I’d wrapped it in a plastic bag and kept it but I threw the whole mess away immediately to keep them from getting on anything else. However, even though I’d washed all my clothing and packed it in tied plastic bags inside my luggage (bedbug prevention), there were black specks on the plastic bags and on the clothing when I unpacked. Not covered like the things in the tote, and the specks were bigger, more the size of the black things I found on myself later. I don’t know whether any of this has any bearing on what’s chewing on me now. I’m very concerned about the potential for contageon. I take eveyr precaution I can reasonably take, short of quitting work and becoming a hermit. I’m a clean person, I wear gloves to clean and prepare food, and I don’t get physically close to the man I take care of; it’s not hands-on care, thankfully. I haven’t hugged anyone in ages and that’s killing me. I’m afraid to go to church and that’s bad, but when I thought I had lice, I was afraid I’d leave it on the upholstery. Not going to Mass is a big deal and I haven’t been since October. I do very little that brings me in close contact with anyone else because I don’t know what this is or whether I could cause someone else damage. This is really worse than the itching, the eggs and the worms. Please tell me whether this sounds like Morgellons and what my next step should be. There’s so much craziness about it on the internet it’s hard to sift the realistic from the ridiculous. I won’t use colloidal silver; too many warnings about it. For right now, I can live with the itch. That may not be true if it worsens. I’ve started taking steps to enhance my immune system; I’m not a pill-taker, so that’s hard. I shower using Dr. Bronner’s castile soap and wash my hair with Selsun Blue. Other than that, I’m not doing much. I think I damaged my scalp and skin with all the treatments I used for lice and I want it to heal before I do anything too out of the ordinary. Thank you for any suggestions you can give me.
This discussion group is the BEST for people suffering from Morgellons:
http://www.morgellons-disease-research.com/Morgellons-Message-Board/morgellons-treatment/
This microscope is the BEST for taking photos direct to your PC:
http://www.topix.com/forum/health/scabies/T0I99G3H9H6SUAS93
( the password for sample Morg photos is lower case )
Best to all,
Vann
PEOPLE ! If you think you have this condition , PLEASE do extencive research . Online you will find Sooo many “PIMPS” – People making Money off your suffering ! . . . This is dicusting ! . . . I have done ALL these things over the years . Some Help , some are a waist of money ! SILVER helps , any kind of silver . Copper helps , any kind ! I say this because I have done both Ionic , and Colloidal ! they BOTH Help ! MMS helps ! MMS2 helps ! . . . Borax Baths are BEST for skin ! this will take away Crawling sensation rite away ! . . A Zapper is a good thing to have aswell , some work better than others ! Even if you didnt have Morgellons , the Zapper is a good thing to have . It will clean your blood of Pathogens , Microbs , etc , but you mite want to look into RIFE , or a Frequency Generator ( More Money ) but it could kill the Disease if you can find the rite Frequency . . . And remember this , the disease will fight back when you try to destroy it . So if you notice it sudenly gets worse when you use a product or method to fight it , than keep going as you can , because it is bothering the Disease . . . The disease causes other parasites to grow in you , and off of you , so you will need to use Anti Parasite , wether it be herbel or chemical . This will only kill what the disease makes . . Do not buy ANY creams or lotions from ANONE ! as this is a complete waist of your money ! It is NOT a skin disease ! it is INTERNAL , and the skin problem is just a symtom ! . . . Again BORAX baths will take care of the skin problem . use a 3rd of a box each bath . You will see !
I have sit and read EVERY single post on here…..THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO GET AHOLD OF DOCTOR OVERMAN! HIS TREATMENT WILL RID YOU GUYS OF ALL Morgellons AND LUPUS!!!!!!!
http://www.webdeb.com/zapper/morgellons.htm THERE IS A LUPUS KIT ON THIS SIT ALSO!
GOD BLESS EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU!
morgellons disease is silicone nanotechnology. Click to find out more information. This can save your life.
^I mean INTERNAL parasite, obviously, or internal ailment..
I have this. I am an otherwise healthy 30 yr old male. Started about 7 years ago, when I thought it was bird mites or scabies. Gradually I have come to realise this isn’t an insect parasite but some sort of external parasite. I have itching and biting sensations and it is only recently after looking ta my skin with a usb microscope (expecting to find some sort of ‘mite’), that I saw these tiny silvery fibres, too thin to be hair, growing from my skin. Unfortunatly I realised that all these crazy sounding people i had come across reseraching bird mites wern’t crazy after all! I have my symptoms very well under control now.I suggest N-acetyl cysteine, garlic, MSM to start. However I take plenty other supplements, check morgellons disease research forum for more info. If you mix some essential oils with coconut oil and rub this all over your body twice daily, you will find your sympoms will improve over night.
I don;t particularly believe “nanotech” theories i tihnk it most likely to a sub dermal parasite either nematode or just possible insect, or more likley some sort of blood born protoxoan parasite along the lines of malaria. It is mentally grueling and physically punishing and you have to be very strong to learn to live with this chronic condition. For the people who mock sufferers, they are cruel indeed. Eventually the medical community will discover and diagnose this problem but it takes time for new (if it is new) or rare diseases to be recognised…
I would say pray for a cure, but I’m an atheist, so lets just hope instead. PS I am in the UK, this problem is not US specific anymore..