Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2006 21:22:30 GMT -5
(NYT) Ailment To Get Scrutiny - CDC To Investigate Mysterious Skin Condition
www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061105/LOCAL17/611050486/1012
Ailment to get scrutiny
CDC to investigate mysterious skin condition that some call psychosomatic
By Michael Mason
The New York Times
After an avalanche of panicked inquiries from patients across the country who claim to have been stricken with a mysterious skin disease, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing to begin a full investigation.
The patients, clustered in California, Texas and Florida, describe symptoms that include sores that are slow to heal, a sensation of things crawling through their skin, joint pain and persistent fatigue.
Many say they believe they have Morgellons disease, a diagnosis that has received wide attention on the Internet but is viewed skeptically by some doctors, who suspect it is psychosomatic in origin.
In its investigation, to be carried out in Southern California, the centers will conduct environmental tests, as well as physical and psychological evaluations of people who say they are afflicted.
"If it's a new bug or something, we'll find it pretty quickly," said Dan Rutz, a spokesman for the centers and a member of the task force planning the investigation.
Whatever its cause, Morgellons disease joins a growing list of symptom clusters that public health officials have been forced to examine in part because of the organizing power and unprecedented reach of the Internet.
Morgellons was brought to public attention by Mary Leitao, a South Carolina woman who in 2001 created a Web site describing the mysterious sores and bizarre threadlike extrusions that afflicted her young son.
She said she had tried for years to find a medical explanation for his illness. Ultimately, she said, doctors accused her of staging it.
Leitao named the condition Morgellons after a 17th-century medical study she'd found that described French children with roughly the same symptoms. More than 7,000 people claiming to have Morgellons have registered on her Web site.
Doctors are divided over whether Morgellons is a medical or psychiatric illness. The patients are clearly suffering from something; it is just not clear what that something is.
"Certainly there is an element of psychiatric distress here, but that's because the patients are ill and nobody wants to listen to them," said Dr. Rafael Stricker, a physician in San Francisco who sees many patients claiming to have Morgellons.
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