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Jan. 17, 2008 -- A mysterious skin problem is erupting all over the country -- and it's caught the CDC's attention. It's been called Morgellons disease, and health officials don't know what to make of it.
More than?11,000 people in the U.S. and elsewhere have reported the same symptoms: itchy, severe skin sores with strange fibers "growing" out of them. There are creepy-crawly sensations, like insects crawling beneath their skin. Fatigue, difficulty concentrating, memory loss, and visual disturbances have also been reported.
The CDC is about to launch a study investigating this illness and has contracted with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California as its location.
In California, both the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles are considered "hot spots," with a large concentration of self-reported cases of the symptoms, reports Michele Pearson, MD, the CDC study's principal investigator.
Initially, Texas and Florida also had large numbers of "self-reports," says Pearson, but now they're coming from all 50 states as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
"Exactly what this means, we don't really know," Pearson tells WebMD. "We hope to look at this critically. Are these true clusters of illness or are there more cases because these are large population centers?"
"There's a lot of speculation about this," Pearson says. "We don't know if this is a new problem or newly recognized problem. We don't know if it's infectious. We don't have any good evidence that it's communicable. However, there are good reports of clustering within families and within households. We are going to look at true clustering in regions and in households."
What she does know, Pearson says, is that "patients are fairly desperate. They are suffering. Many have felt so alienated from the traditional care system that they are seeking some alternative therapies."
Many doctors are similarly frustrated, says Pearson. "They don't feel they have anything to offer patients. Patients feel they are fairly quickly dismissed as having a delusional disorder or psychiatric disorder as a primary cause for their symptoms. When that occurs, they tend to drop out of traditional care systems and look at alternative treatments."
"It's clear that this is a complex disorder and is likely due to multiple factors," she explains. "Some common conditions may be causing the symptoms -- diabetes, thyroid conditions, autoimmune conditions. These can present with chronic ulcerative lesions, chronic itching. Those are some things we hope look for as part of our evaluation."
Kaiser Permanante was chosen for the study because of its electronic search system, Pearson says. "We can query their database for certain diagnoses and symptoms, complaints. We can try to identify people who came in with fibers, threads, and other symptoms. It's a good way to identify patients who are potentially eligible."