WHAT IS THE CDC DOING TO IDENTIFY THE CAUSE OF MORGELLONS DISEASE?

The Centers for Disease Control is responsible for, among other things, controlling and preventing the spread of infectious disease. Because of the mystery surrounding Morgellons disease, people have been waiting for the Centers for Disease Control to step in and investigate. This has not happened in a timely manner. This may be partly due to the fact that many physicians are quick to diagnose patients as suffering from delusions of parasitosis. Often this diagnosis is based on one symptom of Morgellons, which is the sensation of bugs crawling on the skin. If the CDC suspects that they are dealing with delusional people, it is understandable that they may be slow to react.

But the CDC has been inundated with calls from Morgellons patients begging for help in finding the answers. The agency has also been urged by members of Senate, among others, to investigate the disease. It has taken a long to time get results. Three years after the Infectious Diseases Branch of the California Department of Health contacted the CDC about clusters of Morgellons sufferers in the state, the Centers for Disease Control formed a task force to study the disease. Finding enough evidence to warrant an investigation, the CDC began seeking a sole source commercial contract for their Morgellons investigation. Because 24% of the Morgellons cases reported are in California, the CDC asked Kaiser Permanente Northern California to proceed with the first epidemiologic study of Morgellons beginning in Fall of 2007. For the first time The CDC has acknowledged that Morgellons is an emerging health problem. This is a major step forward for those suffering from Morgellons disease. Kaiser Permanente will be responsible for investigating the disease in order to understand what is causing the symptoms as well as estimating how many people it is actually affecting. The results of this study are due by May of 2008.

Even though the CDC has said they are going into the investigation with an open mind, they are hesitant even to label Morgellons as a disease. But the CDC is not the only group doing research. While the Centers of Disease Control were busy labeling the symptoms of Morgellons as delusional parasitosis, people like Randy Wymore were trying to shed some light on the mystery of the disease.

Wymore, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University, has taken the initiative to have the fibers obtained from Morgellons lesions and had them analyzed and compared to fiber samples in the FBI database. There were no matches. Wymore believes that this information, along with the plethora of unexplained symptoms, eliminate delusional parasitosis as a possible diagnosis. Wymore has uncovered that the symptoms are indeed physical and not just in the heads of Morgellons patients.

With the CDC getting involved, it is hoped that things will get better for Morgellons patients. Dismissed as delusional before, the findings of this study could validate patients’ claims. More importantly, federal and state funds would be available for research if the CDC were to find enough information to classify Morgellons as an actual disease.