Lyme disease, morgellons

georgia · medicine forum Guru Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 505

http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151099411556&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112188062620

http://tinyurl.com/p9yrj

I've got you under my skin

Bare Facts
By Regina and Douglas Haggo
The Hamilton Spectator

(Jun 24, 2006)

Does morgellons exist? Pressured by thousands of Americans who say they
have
the mystery disease, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
said this month it is organizing a committee to find out.

"In the absence of any objective review, people have jumped to
conclusions
and found each other on the Internet and formed their own belief
structure,"
the CDC's Dan Rutz told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We really need to
debunk this if there isn't anything to it or identify if there is
indeed a
new, unrecognized disease that needs attention."

The nightmarish symptoms include numerous open sores, fibres growing in
or
on the skin and the feeling of something crawling or biting under the
skin.

Dr. Raphael Stricker, a Lyme disease specialist, told the Chronicle he
has
seen several patients with morgellons symptoms. He and a few other
doctors
believe morgellons is related to Lyme disease, which is spread by deer
ticks.

Other doctors say most of these people have delusional parasitosis, a
psychiatric illness whose sufferers believe they are infested with
parasites.

Those doctors say the sores are caused by people scratching at spots
they
think are infested.

"It's probably just a group of patients who haven't gotten the
appropriate
treatment, and they're calling it morgellons," said Dr. Dan Eisen, a
dermatologist at the University of California-Davis

Only skin deep?

It's plain to see that tattoos and body piercings have grown more
popular in
the past decade or so.

A generation or two ago, The Associated Press says, tattoos were
associated
with soldiers, sailors, bikers and carnival workers. Now body art has
gone
mainstream.

A new survey by two dermatologists suggests 24 per cent of Americans 18
to
50 have at least one tattoo. In the 18-29 age group, the proportion
rises to
36 per cent.

Fourteen per cent of respondents said they had a piercing somewhere
other
than the earlobe. Nearly half the 18-29 group have a tattoo or a
piercing or
both.

The survey found tattooing to be equally common in both sexes, but
women
were more likely to have body piercings.

The article by Dr. Anne Laumann and Dr. Amy Derick was published online
this
month by the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
(eblue.org).

Boston on the spot

The most distinctive sign of measles is a rash, but the disease is,
like
influenza, pneumonia and SARS, a respiratory illness. Spread by
coughing and
sneezing, the virus is highly infectious.

Thanks to widespread vaccination, measles has been eliminated in the
Americas, but it remains endemic on other continents.

An outbreak in progress in Boston -- the first in Massachusetts since
1999 -- was traced to a computer programmer who flew in from India.
Disease
detectives ordered three downtown workplaces shut down to keep the
13-person
outbreak under control.

A small percentage of North Americans, mostly in their 30s and 40s, are
not
adequately vaccinated. Canada typically sees fewer than 10 cases a
year,
according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Measles is much more common in Germany, where soccer's World Cup is
attracting thousands of visitors. The state of North Rhine --
Westphalia
alone has reported more than 1,100 cases this year.

A word in your ear

Morgellons, pronounced with a hard g, comes from Sir Thomas Browne, a
17th-century English writer and physician. In one of his letters, he
refers
to a disease he came across while living in southern France decades
earlier -- "a Distemper of little Children in Languedock, called the
Morgellons, wherein they critically break out with harsh Hairs on their
Backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the Disease, and
delivers
them from Coughs and Convulsions."

In the 17th century, it was customary to capitalize nouns in English.

C. E. Kellett published an article about Browne and Morgellons in the
Annals
of Medical History in 1935.

Kellett suggests that Browne's morgellons is the disease the French
called
masclous or masquelons, which was said to produce hairs or worms on the
back.

These words, he says, are derived from the Latin muscula, "little fly."

Mary Leitao, founder of the Morgellons Research Foundation, does not
claim
that today's morgellons is the same as Browne's. She says she chose the
term
in order to have a consistent label.

dhaggo@thespec.com

905-526-3333

Contents copyright 1991-2006, The Hamilton Spectator

Google