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**hawkeye** · May 12, 2006, 10:30 AM

Doctors puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in South Texas

Doctors puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in South Texas

Web Posted: 05/11/2006 11:22 PM CDT

Deborah Knapp
KENS 5 Eyewitness News

If diseases like AIDS and bird flu scare you, wait until you hear what's next. Doctors are trying to find out what is causing a bizarre and mysterious infection that's surfaced in South Texas.

Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.

"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.

Patients get lesions that never heal.

"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.

Web extra
? Exclusive interview: Ginger Savely talks more on Morgellons
Web extra
? Morgellons Research Foundation

Patients say that's the worst symptom ? strange fibers that pop out of your skin in different colors.

"He'd have attacks and fibers would come out of his hands and fingers, white, black and sometimes red. Very, very painful," said Lisa Wilson, whose son Travis had Morgellon's disease.

While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.

"It really has the makings of a horror movie in every way," Savely said.

While Savely sees this as a legitimate disease, there are many doctors who simply refuse to acknowledge it exists, because of the bizarre symptoms patients are diagnosed as delusional.

"Believe me, if I just randomly saw one of these patients in my office, I would think they were crazy too," Savely said. "But after you've heard the story of over 100 (patients) and they're all ? down to the most minute detail ? saying the exact same thing, that becomes quite impressive."

Travis Wilson developed Morgellons just over a year ago. He called his mother in to see a fiber coming out of a lesion.

"It looked like a piece of spaghetti was sticking out about a quarter to an eighth of an inch long and it was sticking out of his chest," Lisa Wilson said. "I tried to pull it as hard as I could out and I could not pull it out."

The Wilson's spent $14,000 after insurance last year on doctors and medicine.

"Most of them are antibiotics. He was on Tamadone for pain. Viltricide, this was an anti-parasitic. This was to try and protect his skin because of all the lesions and stuff," Lisa said.

However, nothing worked, and 23-year-old Travis could no longer take it.

"I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do to stop him," Lisa Wilson said.

Just two weeks ago, Travis took his life.

Stephanie Bailey developed the lesions four-and-a-half years ago.

"The lesions come up, and then these fuzzy things like spores come out," she said.

She also has the crawling sensation.

"You just want to get it out of you," Bailey said.

She has no idea what caused the disease, and nothing has worked to clear it up.

"They (doctors) told me I was just doing this to myself, that I was nuts. So basically I stopped going to doctors because I was afraid they were going to lock me up," Bailey said.

Harriett Bishop has battled Morgellons for 12 years. After a year on antibiotics, her hands have nearly cleared up. On the day, we visited her she only had one lesion and she extracted this fiber from it.

"You want to get these things out to relieve the pain, and that's why you pull and then you can see the fibers there, and the tentacles are there, and there are millions of them," Bishop said.

So far, pathologists have failed to find any infection in the fibers pulled from lesions.

"Clearly something is physically happening here," said Dr. Randy Wymore, a researcher at the Morgellons Research Foundation at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences.

Wymore examines the fibers, scabs and other samples from Morgellon's patients to try and find the disease's cause.

"These fibers don't look like common environmental fibers," he said.

The goal at OSU is to scientifically find out what is going on. Until then, patients and doctors struggle with this mysterious and bizarre infection. Thus far, the only treatment that has showed some success is an antibiotic.

"It sounds a little like a parasite, like a fungal infection, like a bacterial infection, but it never quite fits all the criteria of any known pathogen," Savely said

No one knows how Morgellans is contracted, but it does not appear to be contagious. The states with the highest number of cases are Texas, California and Florida.

The only connection found so far is that more than half of the Morgellons patients are also diagnosed with Lyme disease.

For more information on Morgellons, visit the research foundation's Web site at www.morgellons.org.

**Shannon Bennett** · May 12, 2006, 11:35 AM

Re: Doctors puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in South Texas

Sounds like some kind of mycological infection.

I'm sorry but it reminds me of the horror movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". We could change the lyrics of the lyrics of the song played in that film to,

Hey, let me tell you mister,
a to-mato just ate my sister

to

a mushroom just ate my sister.

</IMG>

**Binkerbear** · July 26, 2006, 09:22 PM

Re: Morgellons disease - U.S. - Docs puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in S. Texas

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 July 2006, 03:00 CDT CDC to Investigate Mystery Disease

The Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans a study to determine if Morgellons disease actually exists.

The symptoms include lesions and mysterious fibers under or popping out of the skin. Reports of the condition in the United States are most common in California, Florida and Texas, but the disease has been reported from all over the country and in many foreign countries as well, the Chicago Tribune said.
<script>if (window.location.pathname.indexOf('/news/health/') !=-1){ DISPLAY_AD(2,6,1);}else{ OAS_AD('Middle');}</script><script language="javascript" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/cm.pub.redorbit/none;t=none;h=none;pos=1;comp=;tile=2;sz=336x280;o rd=925355955?"></script><center><script language="javascript" src="http://a.tribalfusion.com/j.ad?site=RedOrbit&adSpace=Health&size=300x250&noA d=1&requestID=7680613830.29294463372126394"></script><noscript></noscript></center>Some doctors believe that people with Morgellons suffer from a form of hysteria with the Internet helping to recruit new victims. But others are equally convinced that it is a disease, although the cause is unknown.

Dr. Randy Wymore of Oklahoma State University told KENS TV in San Antonio that he has examined fibers from hundreds of patients and determined that they are similar to each other -- and unlike fibers found in cloth. Doctors at OSU also say that they have observed fibers under unbroken skin, where patients could not have rubbed them in.

Source: United Press International

**St Michael** · July 27, 2006, 08:31 PM

Re: Morgellons disease - U.S. - Docs puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in S. Texas

Making Their Skin Crawl

People with creepy symptoms find a diagnosis on the Internet. But are they jumping to conclusions?

BY BENJAMIN CHERTOFF
Photograph by Brent Humphreys
Published in the June, 2005 issue.

Miles Lawrence, a landscaper in Florence, Texas, was supposed to be packing for a road trip to Las Vegas when he noticed his finger tingling. He stared in disbelief, he says, as "little spiny things" sprouted out of the skin where he'd just removed a splinter. He grasped one of the spines with tweezers and pulled.

Instantly, he says, a bolt of pain shot up his arm. He tugged on another one and the pain snaked up his neck. Then the really creepy part began. "It felt like bugs under the skin of my arms, in my joints," Lawrence says. "I freaked out."

Across the country, thousands of people complaining of the same horrifying phenomenon have formed an illness subculture. They share lists of symptoms, medical speculation and tales of run-ins with mainstream doctors at www.morgellons.org, the official Web site of a group called the Morgellons Research Foundation. It was founded in 2002 by Mary Leitao in McMurray, Pa. Leitao named the condition Morgellons Disease--after a disease with similar symptoms mentioned in a 16th-century medical text--while investigating a skin affliction on her then-2-year-old son.

Morgellons has barely registered on the radar of mainstream medicine. Few doctors have heard of the condition; fewer still know what to make of it. So when people walk into an examination room and announce they have Morgellons, they are often met with skepticism. Conflicts would seem to be inevitable.

"Dermatologists are afraid to see these patients," says Dr. Peter Lynch, professor emeritus of dermatology at the University of California, Davis. He says he has examined about 75 people with Morgellons-like symptoms in the past 35 years and believes they suffer from delusional parasitosis--literally, delusions of parasites in the skin. It's a diagnosis people don't like. One patient, threatening malpractice, convinced the state medical board to investigate Lynch. Another warned he had a pistol in the glove compartment of his truck, Lynch says. "He told me, 'I'm going to shoot the next doctor who tells me it's in my head.'"

LAB RESULTS
Members of the Morgellons online community say that, like those who suffer from breast cancer and AIDS, they merely want appropriate resources devoted to their illness. A letter-writing campaign recently netted a modicum of high-profile attention when U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asking whether the organization had investigated the illness. The answer was no. "Our laboratories are available," says CDC spokeswoman Jennifer Morcone. "But we need a clinically appropriate sample." So far, she says, they've only received samples sent in by patients.

There's a reason for that. Lynch and a number of other doctors say they have sent samples to hospital pathologists, medical labs and state health boards, which have uniformly failed to find any sign of an infection. If there's nothing tangible to investigate, there's no reason to call in the big guns at CDC headquarters.

BACTERIA CULTURE
When Miles Lawrence sped to the hospital, he was told he had delusional parasitosis and that the weird spines were "just dirt." But over the next week his symptoms got worse. He scratched at his elbows and noticed more fibers, and little black specks. "It was like they were fighting back," he says.

Eventually, he found his way to a medical professional who does take the idea of Morgellons seriously. Ginger Savely, a nurse practitioner in Austin, Texas, says she has treated 35 patients with symptoms. "Everyone tells the exact same story," she says. "It's just so consistent." Savely prescribes her patients a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics. "If I knew what I was dealing with," she says, "it would be easier to treat." Yet, she says, her patients--including Lawrence--improve within weeks.

Other clinicians have likewise prescribed antibiotics. Dr. Raphael Stricker, a Lyme disease specialist in San Francisco, sees a handful of Morgellons patients--all of whom have tested positive for chronic Lyme disease. He thinks that Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria behind Lyme disease, has set his patients up for another, as-yet-unidentified, infection. And Dr. George Schwartz, a Santa Fe, N.M., trauma specialist, treats his patients with antibiotics targeted to Stenotrophomonas maltophilia--a usually harmless waterborne bacterium--and says he's seen them improve in only 48 hours.

HEAD GAMES
The apparent success of antibiotic treatment for Morgellons hasn't swayed doctors like Lynch--mainly because pathologists have failed to find an infectious agent. "These scientists can recognize things down to the prion level, and viruses that do everything to evade detection," he says. Lynch's preferred treatment: the antipsychotic drug risperidone--which works, he says, in as little as two weeks.

Another prominent dermatologist, who insisted on anonymity out of concern for his safety, says he has diagnosed 50 or so Morgellons patients with cutaneous dysaesthesia--a neurological disorder that can result in the sensation of scuttling insects. And the spiny things? "In every case I've seen it's a textile fiber, and it's on the surface of the skin," he says. He typically puts a cast over the lesions to prevent further irritation and after four weeks removes it. "Guess what?" he says. "The lesions are healed."

Leitao and other Morgellons activists say that, with the Web as a primary tool, they'll continue working to have the illness investigated as an infectious disease. Doctors interviewed by PM say this unilateral approach hinders objective analysis of symptoms they've seen for decades. Well, all symptoms except for one: Widespread reports of the strange fibers date back only three years, to the time they were first described online, at www.morgellons.org.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/medicine/1662162.html

**St Michael** · July 27, 2006, 09:20 PM

Re: Morgellons disease - U.S. - Docs puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in S. Texas

Take a look at this illustration:

Look at the top right corner where they illustrate a peeling apart of the epidermis from the dermis. Each layer looks like an eggcrate mattress, with interdigitating fingers.

It doesn't take much trauma to remove that layer of epidermis and reveal that eggcrate structure. I see it all the time when people try to treat their own plantars warts. They see little black and/or red dots which they think are "roots" and they try to pull them out with tweezers. What they are pulling are capillary loops and these dermal papillae that extend into the epidermis. And it hurts like heck when you pull on them, and you can't get them out easily because they are attached to connective tissue.

When I did my ER rotations, I saw a lot of skin tears and skin lacerations. During different forms of trauma, you'll see the epidermis pulled away from the dermis, and you'll see all these white projections like little fingers sticking up. Imagine the tentacles on a coral. It looks just like that link. And each little dermal papilla (or "dermal peg") is big enough to grab with very fine forceps in some areas of the skin.

I think most people with Morgellons are suffering from various inflammatory skin diseases, including dermatitis, eczema, etc. When they scratch, they inflame the skin. It doesn't take much to scratch enough epidermis that some serous weeping occurs. If the epidermis is excoriated enough to allow serous weeping, further inflammation, pain, and itching occurs. I.e., the Itch-scratch-itch cycle. Serous weeping and scab formation entraps environmental fibers and lint.

Therefore lesions will display both multi-colored and variable environmental fibers, and severe excoriations can actually expose the dermal papillae and eggcrate finger-like projections from the dermis into the epidermis. This would explain both the fibers and the little projections that Morgellons sufferers try to pull out but cannot, accompanied by excruiciating pain following such attempts.

One of the leading "researchers" on Morgellons lost her license to practice medicine (I think she was a nurse practitioner?) in Texas, and now charges Morgellons victims $500 to $1000 per initial visits, and hundreds of dollars for each subsequent visit, and even hundreds of dollars for each follow up phone consultation.

That's a big red flag.

Yes, these people are suffering real symptoms. Yes, they are being neglected and abused by the allopathic medical establishment, who labels them with delusional parasitosis and/or neurotic excoriations. But the "Morgellons advocates" aren't helping them by tilting at windmills either, and in at least one documented clinicians case, they are being charged exhorbitant fees to keep them thinking Morgellons is "real."

Beware snake oil peddlers. They exist in mainstream medicine and in alternative medicine.

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Morgellons disease - U.S. - Docs puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in S. Texas

Morgellons disease - U.S. - Docs puzzled over bizarre infection surfacing in S. Texas

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