[eric_b]

More bizarre stuff. There may be yet another strange new emerging disease here.

Some sort of skin affliction, with other CNS effects. Unknown what it is at this time. Calling
it the 'fiber' disease, as one of the symptoms is people with it 'shed' these strange fibers and
flakes, that glitter and floresce.

See this link:
http://morgellons.com

See this intesting forum where people discuss this new affliction. Including people with the disease -
thread was started by a woman whos family has it:
http://www.biology-online.org/biology-f ... asc-0.html

(edit: see the part of thread, starting here... wha?)
http://www.biology-online.org/biology-f ... sc-36.html

(edit: fiber study link.)
http://www.texramp.net/~chazman/JHav-02.htm

Somebody tell me this is all tin-foil-hat sh*t. Please?

If true this is like something from the x-files.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nother prominent dermatologist, who insisted on anonymity out of concern for his safety, says he has diagnosed 50 or so Morgellons patients with cutaneous dysaesthesia--a neurological disorder that can result in the sensation of scuttling insects. And the spiny things? "In every case I've seen it's a textile fiber, and it's on the surface of the skin," he says. He typically puts a cast over the lesions to prevent further irritation and after four weeks removes it. "Guess what?" he says. "The lesions are healed."

[gg3]

Having looked at the slightly gross picture via one of the links above, what that looks like to me is:

Basically an ingrown hair combined with a subcutaneous cyst.

If they tested those fibers to compare with normal hair, I bet they'd find a match.

And if there are no unusual bugs showing up in the cyst material that's been removed from the lesion, then what you've got is equivalent to a pimple with a minor complication.

As for the high prevalence of other disorders including some apparent neurological and psychiatric: Most of those will turn out to be coincidences. Some, such as the individuals who have that "bugs crawling on my skin" feeling, will turn out to be allergies, possibly exacerbated by other factors such as pollution. Some of the ones that occur along with e.g. Lyme Disease will turn out to be the result of incresed medical attention picking up on small symptoms and correlating them incorrectly.

As I said, don't freak out, I suspect this isn't anything more than people mistakenly correlating a bunch of unrelated symptoms.

[bobcousins]

Perhaps not new, as it was first described in the 17th century. It sounds weird, but that is not reason enough to dismiss it. When Prusiner suggested prions as an infectious agent, everyone said that was crazy. There is lot we don't know.

OTOH, it could well be a bunch of miscellaneous things being lumped together. In a population with heightened medical awareness, and general paranoia, small things previously dismissed enter the spotlight. To say an epidemic of a new mystery disease is sweeping the nation is somewhat of an overstatement.

[Leanan]

What I found interesting was the doctor who found that every one of his "Morgellon's" patients tested positive for Lyme.

The thing about Lyme disease is that if you let it go too long, it causes neurological symptoms. Which can include psychosis. A friend of mine who had been perfectly sane and well-adjusted all his life ended up in the bugbin because of Lyme disease. Once they realized what it was, and treated him for it, he recovered.

This is an area with a high prevalance of Lyme, so it tends to be recognized fairly rapidly. But outside the northeast and Michigan, doctors often don't think of Lyme.

[Paul64]

I don't think this is anything new at all. I am very sure some people with weak immune systems do in fact get some of these weird symptoms, and the docs decided to come up with a new label. Its like CFS or CFIDS that was more in the news years ago. Along with this you get a foundation that can make money from donations to pass along to big pharma, along with useless research for a 'cure' for the 'disease'. My conclusion - nothing to worry about if one is in good health

[ChumpusRex]

I don't really know what I can say, but it's curious that there have been so many reported cases.

I'm not a dermatologist. I've looked at a number of photographs of these fibres posted by several sufferers. To be honest, they look like textile fibres: multicoloured, sometimes multistranded, sometimes embedded in random orientation in flakes of skin or scab.

I note that there are reports of these fibres being analysed and testing as cellulose (the major component of cotton). There are also fluorescence photos - many modern fabrics and detergents contain optical brightners (fluorescent dyes) that convert invisible UV light into visible blue (or other coloured light) making whites, 'whiter than white' - blue (or other coloured) fluorescence on a UV microscope is not unexpected.

I'm slightly surprised that Stenotrophomonas has been blamed. This is a very weakly pathogenic bacterium which fairly commonly lives on the skin. It generally can only infect people with desperately weakened immune systems, and usually with open wounds or intravenous lines. In addition, it is readily out grown by more normal 'friendly' bacteria - so unless someone has had a very long course of very strong broad-spectrum antibiotics (which kill off everything else) they're unlikely to pick it up.

Admittedly, once Stenotrophomonas has taken hold in a weak patient - it's desperately hard to shift. Even massive doses of a cocktail of antibiotics won't readily shift it. Even so, the antibiotics needed (septrin + 1 other - ideally timentin) are pretty toxic - so most doctors would want definitive proof that this is the cause of infection before starting to treat this.

There's not really enough information available on those support group sites, to form a sensible opinion. There's huge quantities of pseudo-science babble that need to be filtered out, and sadly I haven't the time to try and find the useful bits.

A connection to Lyme disease is perfectly reasonable. There are a number of diseases that can cause all sorts of weird symptoms, neurological and psychiatric as well as physical - Lyme is one. And, importantly, there are definitive, easily performed tests available.

Admittedly, not having found anything doesn't mean that there isn't anything to find - but, the fact that some doctors have seen many people and arranged for many laboratory investigations yet the tests reveal no abnormality does not support the idea that there is a consistent biological process in these sufferers.

[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ChumpusRex', 'I')'m not a dermatologist. I've looked at a number of photographs of these fibres posted by several sufferers. To be honest, they look like textile fibres: multicoloured, sometimes multistranded, sometimes embedded in random orientation in flakes of skin or scab.