Morgellons disease exists "only in patients' minds," study shows
Sufferers of Morgellons describe symptoms including fatigue, erupting sores, crawling sensations on their skin, and mysterious red, blue or black fibers sprouting from their skin. Some say they've suffered for decades.
The study, published Jan. 25 in the journal PLoS One , cost nearly $600,000. It focused on more than 3 million people who lived in 13 counties in Northern California. After researchers went through Kaiser Permanente patient records, they flagged 115 people who had what sounded like Morgellons. That's the equivalent of roughly 4 out of every 100,000 Kaiser enrollees. "So it's rare," said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team. But when the researchers dug further to find a cause for the disease, they came up empty.
"We found no infectious cause," Eberhard said.
Most of the afflicted patients were middle-aged white women. One hundred of the patients agreed to answer survey questions and 40 consented to physical and psychological tests. The patients had no diseases, but more depression than the general public and were more obsessive about physical ailments, the study found.