Morgellons Disease

Morgellons (also called Morgellons disease or Morgellons syndrome) is a name given in 2002 by biologist Mary Leitao to a condition characterized by a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms. Persons who suffer from this unexplained condition report crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; finding fibers on or under the skin; and persistent skin lesions (e.g. rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision. It is not known at present whether the condition represents a new disease entity, or whether persons who identify themselves as having Morgellons have a common cause for their symptoms, share common risk factors, or are contagious. A majority of health professionals, including most dermatologists, regard Morgellons as a manifestation of other known medical conditions, including delusional parasitosis. The Morgellons Research Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organization, believes that it is a new infectious disease that will be confirmed by future research. "Other health professionals don't acknowledge Morgellons disease or are reserving judgment until more is known about the condition." Institutional Review Board approval for a CDC investigation into Morgellons is scheduled for October, 30 2007.

Introduction And Background

Morgellons disease was first described 1674 and the term ?Morgellons? was later reintroduced in 2002 to define an undiagnosed mysterious illness that afflicts tens or more likely hundreds of thousands of individuals in the United States and around the world. The manifestations of the disease are consistent between sufferers in different parts of the world with one uniform clinical sign and that is the appearance of fibers of different colors that protrude out of the skin in different parts of the body. In addition to the appearance of fibers, patients describe painful deep lesions under the skin, rashes or sores, chronic fatigue, mental confusion, brain fog, memory loss, crawling, biting and stinging sensations and other psychological symptoms that vary in severity between sufferers. To this day, the medical community remains divided on the definition of Morgellons disease and many still believe that it is a mental illness or Delusions of Parasitosis despite the availability of substantial compelling evidence that it is a real devastating disease that afflicts unknown numbers of humans (and possibly animals) around the world. It was not until recently that the CDC acknowledged that this is a real disease with an unknown etiology. They stopped short of calling it a contagious disease because little is known about the epidemiology of the disease. Some of Morgellons sufferers describe an environmental exposure incident that preceded the onset of symptoms and others describe exposure to an individual that has the disease. This disease is an infectious disease in every sense of the word and has been reported to spread in households. The mode of transmission is not yet confirmed although there are reported cases of transmission through blood transfusion and others through physical contact with someone showing symptoms. The symptoms are debilitating and cause a great deal of morbidity. In many cases, patients become disabled because of this disease, unable to carry on with their lives, lose their jobs, homes and can no longer afford the basics that we take for granted. Even worse than material loss is the social impact, rejection, family breakdown and mistreatment these patients receive from some members of the society and medical community. The Morgellons Foundation, founded by a scientist and a mother of an infected child and led by a number of experienced clinicians and professionals has been making a tremendous outreach effort to educate the public and medical research community about this debilitating disease. Today, there are more than 10,000 families worldwide registered on the Morgellons Foundation website. A CDC task force was formed in 2006 to investigate the epidemiology of Morgellons, and a study protocol is being developed to launch the investigation. We learned about the disease a year ago from a sufferer and started a preliminary investigation in 2006. The descriptions of the disease indicate that this is a systemic disease that has pulmonary, urinary tract, digestive tract, skin and neurological involvement. The complexity of the symptoms and the lack of a consistent clinical profile among patients makes it very difficult to identify the causative agent(s) especially that no one, up to date was able to isolate, culture or identify the origin of the fibers that many have photographed. A sizable library of images collected over the years showing auto fluorescence under different wavelengths, electron microscopy images and other high resolution images of the fibers and skin lesions is posted on the web on different websites. We have collected in our laboratory a number of images of unstained fibers showing auto fluorescences with both the blue and red filters of an epifluorescent microscope. It is clear that a thorough investigation is in order to first identify the causative agent of this disease and second to possibly study this organism in vitro if it can be cultured in a laboratory environment in order to determine drug effectiveness and a possible treatment strategy.