http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029908
Abstract:
Background
Morgellons is a poorly characterized constellation of symptoms, with the primary manifestations involving the skin. We conducted an investigation of this unexplained dermopathy to characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features and explore potential etiologies.
Methods
A descriptive study was conducted among persons at least 13 years of age and enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) during 2006–2008. A case was defined as the self-reported emergence of fibers or materials from the skin accompanied by skin lesions and/or disturbing skin sensations. We collected detailed epidemiologic data, performed clinical evaluations and geospatial analyses and analyzed materials collected from participants’ skin.
Results
We identified 115 case-patients. The prevalence was 3.65 (95% CI = 2.98, 4.40) cases per 100,000 enrollees. There was no clustering of cases within the 13-county KPNC catchment area (p = .113). Case-patients had a median age of 52 years (range: 17–93) and were primarily female (77%) and Caucasian (77%). Multi-system complaints were common; 70% reported chronic fatigue and 54% rated their overall health as fair or poor with mean Physical Component Scores and Mental Component Scores of 36.63 (SD = 12.9) and 35.45 (SD = 12.89), respectively. Cognitive deficits were detected in 59% of case-patients and 63% had evidence of clinically significant somatic complaints; 50% had drugs detected in hair samples and 78% reported exposure to solvents. Solar elastosis was the most common histopathologic abnormality (51% of biopsies); skin lesions were most consistent with arthropod bites or chronic excoriations. No parasites or mycobacteria were detected. Most materials collected from participants’ skin were composed of cellulose, likely of cotton origin.
Conclusions
This unexplained dermopathy was rare among this population of Northern California residents, but associated with significantly reduced health-related quality of life. No common underlying medical condition or infectious source was identified, similar to more commonly recognized conditions such as delusional infestation.
That’s basically consistent with what I’ve said all along since I started this site in April 2006. The fibers are environmental (and mostly cotton), Morgellons is not a distinct disease, and the patients suffer from a variety of conditions – both physical and/or psychological.
I recognize that the people who think they have “Morgellons” are really suffering. But the answer is not in inventing a new disease. I recognize also this report will be a disappointment for them – but hopefully some will take it as an opportunity. It’s not a strange new disease. The fibers are not alive. You might just have some known conditions that can be treated. Talk to your doctor. Keep an open mind. Good luck.
The range of media headlines is quite amusing, simultaneously the CDC has “cracked the code” and has “no explanation”, it’s “debunked” but “still a puzzle”.
This site is great. Anything to fight erroneous claims on the internet is necessary. Unfortunately sites like this are vastly outnumbered by enabling sites. Morgellons sounded like a obsessive/hypochondriac personality created disease when I first heard about it and the more I read about it the more it confirms my belief. I mean come on these “bodily emissions” are tested to be strands of cotton and nylon? What organism on earth secretes threads of cotton or nylon?
This disease is likely psychological possibly coupled with a hypersensitive nervous system. Unfortunately people will continue to “have” this disease since no one wants to be told they are crazy (I don’t necessarily think that’s what they are but that is what they will feel when they hear its psych related). They will turn inward to their enabling community and in some ways it will make it stronger.
Regardless keep up the good work here. I just found this site because my interest was piqued due to this study. I’ll check back occasionally.
Hello, Michael. Well, it would certainly be nice if all of the morgies were in the position to be accepting of the conclusion of the CDC’s study. They could all decide to treat the various underlying causes which directly contributed to the development of their bizarre symptoms and be on the road to better health. But, of course, that’s not how something like this goes, and their quacks are going to continue playing along with them. What a bummer.
This report will at least give medical practitioners a firm basis for understanding the condition. It will also provide the media with perspective, so they stop doing such breathless stories.
It is very sad that for many people though, this will make little difference. One hopes that it will at least help with the marginal cases.
Just found your site,wish the history channel would retract statements their past shows have made about Morgellons with this news revealed. I mean I guess it is history technically,but really? These shows have showed inaccurate information and I would think they care about their educational reputation…
I received the below article in a Google Alert. If the photograph is to be believed, it appears to be a larger fragment of the, well publicized over the internet, artificial knee that Jan Smith had replaced.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2012/01/30/cdc-calls-morgellons-nanoworms-a-delusio
Biomedical Devices
http://xnet.rrc.mb.ca/davidb/biomaterials.htm
This study doesnt really prove anything.
All it proves is they still dont know what morgellons symptoms are caused from.
(They used to think stomach ulcers were caused from stress until they proved they are mostly caused from a bacteria ……)
Going to a doctor to rule out other things, cant argue with that . But most of the time they can not help you ,or know what to do, or find anything and send you on your way .Thats the PROBLEM!
Some cases they find other serious diseases so its important to get checked out ,I aggree.
It indicates that there’s no COMMON underlying cause to the symptoms. It also said the fibers seemed to just be natural, cotton and suchlike, from clothing.
I think that 70% had chronic fatigue is very signicant.That tells me something is off right there.
Of course they are going to find some clothing fibers stuck on the open lesions,thats no surprize.
They still dont know why Morgellons people have abnormal amounts of fibers on their bodys .ABNORMAL being key word.
Ive experienced the fibers so I know there is something to it .
Now that my symptoms are down,so are the fibers.
All I know is taking large amounts of VitC(10-20 grams) daily keeps crawling symptoms at bay for me .So does drinking apple cider vinegar.
For some people just eating healthy and eliminating junk
foods and sugar really helps.
Its very important for people with morgellons symptoms to eat healthy and live healthy life styles .Ive seen many improve from just that.
Whatever it is seems to thrive on sugar/carbs.
Im writing these things not to argue but to help anyone who has these morgellons symptoms.
I am absolutely certain I have Morgellons and I am not delusional. The suggestion that my constant skin problems and myriad of other symptoms might be Morgellons came from my psychiatrist who knows my mental state better than anyone. I don’t think bugs are crawling under my skin and I never have. To me. it feels like there is a net of fine hair over my entire body. The hairs track my nerves and cause a great deal of pain. I can hardly walk more than a block before I am in so much pain, I have to sit down. When the net of hair breaks, I get a sore. They occur in a line and the fine hair connects the lesions. I think I contracted Morgellons from a sick cat I had about 12 years ago. The cat dies of a mysterious skin illness that consisted of bumps all over the cats body. The Morgellons started on my hands and handling a sick cat might have been the culprit. I am absolutely miserable, scared, sick, uncomfortable, and scarred physically emotionally. I need some help. Can anyone in San Francisco help me?
Are you ready for the Cloud?
Of course “They” know it’s a genuine condition, just as “they” know ritual abuse and murder, mind control, HAARP’s and HAARP-like abuses of the planet’s delicately balanced systems, false wars and faked terrorism as mass human sacrifices, etc., ad nausem, are genuine.
The whole pack of psychopathic, infantile losers–illuminati/NWO/aryan/luciferian/whatever–are playing Sims with planet Earth and all of its living creatures.
And you groupies who obligingly post your “gosh, yes, aren’t those conspiracy nuts nuts!” comments are pathetic. Once they’ve implemented their Big Plan [assuming their release dates don’t continue to slip] I’m sure you’ll find being victimized as a spine robot and emotional pain well for your twisted, lying, back-stabbing, sadistic overlords with their unresolved Mommy and Daddy issues to be almost as much fun as it sounds.
Oh look, my previous comment didn’t meet the blog owner’s approval. No problem, it was meant for you and your fellow deluded victims-to-be, all *so* ready for the Cloud. Twits.
As a young child, in the early 1960s, I had similar symptoms to those reported by Morgellons sufferers. My mother took me to a doctor who said I was allergic to my own fingernails. A few days later, my mother found me in the kitchen floor with a box of mouse poison that I had pulled out from under the kitchen stove. She said I was sitting there feeding it grain by grain to a mouse and alternately eating one myself. Although the symptoms may have been aggravated by an allegy, it is more likely that they were either a warfarin side effect or the result of something I caught from sharing food with a mouse. My mother liked to tell this story whenever she disagreed with a doctor’s diagnosis.
Hello,
I’ve not come here to make a noise, upset anyone or fight.
I still have this disease Morgellons.
I would like to point out this paragraph from the CDC study;
DISCLAIMER: The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kaiser Permanente or the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
I doubt whether any of the participants in the study had Morgellons. If I were in the study I’d be letting the world know. Nothing rings true with any of this and never did from the start.
This is an ABC News link from January about the CDC Study; http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/morgellons-disease-clues-mysterious-crawling-skin-fibers/story?id=15439374#.T23LXmE7i8A
If you watch the video at 1.11 – 1.14 – those fibers belong to me. They are owned (or so I thought) by myself on this computer. Some how, some way, some one got those videos off this computer, not recently, long ago.
If someone told me I was going to have another 8 years as bad as the last 8 or worse, I wouldn’t want to live. Soldiers are trained for this torture, not unsuspecting citizens minding their own business. Not knowing that their very own Government are happy to kill them and make them suffer two fold.
I can’t find enough “shocking” words to describe for me alone what I have been put through. The worse part is, it ain’t getting any better. Australians are dropping like flies from Lyme disease, if they’re not dead, they’re pretty close too. Our Government say there is no locally acquired Lyme and it doesn’t exist in Australia. Strange then how someone in Australia just recently won a compensation case for Lyme disease acquired in Australia!
The common underlying cause to Morgellons is “we’re human” and you don’t go messing with God’s work and you don’t lie to genuinely sick people.
I’m tired on the tongue twisting comments about this supposed psychiatric hypochondria. We could settle the Morgellons “argument” once and for all – do a real epidemiology study with real people, who know they have this disease. I’m putting my hand up right now.
Here’s a letter I sent to the editor of The Examiner in San Francisco. I posted the map on my blog Morgellons Joe alonside of map of associated watershed.
The CDC recently released and posted online Clinical, epidemiologic, histopathologic and molecular features of an unexplained dermopathy which included a map showing a cluster of Morgellons Disease sufferers associated with the Guadalupe River watershed downstream from the New Almaden Mercury Mines. While some in the medical world suggest this symptoms set best fits in the diagnosis of Delusional Parasitosis, my research and experience suggests symptoms relate to mercury toxicity (see Keleher in Explore! Journal for the medical professional- issues 17.4, 17.6, 20.5, and 21.1). Parethesia (crawling, biting, poking sensations under/on skin) is a known symptom of mercury poisoning (see accounts of Minimata, Japan as well as Northern Iraq or do a search on pubmed.gov of “mercury” and “parenthesia”). The best means of determining a systemic body burden of mercury may be testing gluathiane levels. I believe further investigations are needed.
If Morgellons is not real, then can someone explain the black specs that almost all sufferers say they experience. I have also seen these black specs and I keep trying to find a explanation.
Is there a scabies breed that leaves black specs or some other parasite? Or is Morgellons creating the black specs?
The black specs are the one symptom of this disease that is truly unique, so far. If we can solve the black specs we can solve this mystery.
This whole Morgellons thing is very creepy. Sufferers just don’t understand how crazy they sound. Even if you find a site that doesn’t reference “nanotechnology” and “chemtrails,” it’s usually full of close-ups of lint mixed with normal tissue. There’s never any context for these photos, just a close-up saying “THIS WAS EXTRACTED FROM MY SKIN.” Everything looks weird and unfamiliar under a microscope.
It’s fairly obvious how you get fibers under your skin. You scratch holes in yourself, you wear clothes over the holes, fibers from the clothes get in the holes, and the holes begin to heal. Now it looks like you have fibers growing out of your skin.
I realize that this is futile, but if you have Morgellons, please consider that it might be in your head. Stop scratching, stop reading about this stuff online, and get a hobby. It will go away.