Doctors make Progress with Mystery Disease

[katty]

cont'd: http://www.ktvu.com/news/9264350/detail.html

Doctors Make Progress With Mysterious Disease

POSTED: 7:26 pm PDT May 23, 2006
UPDATED: 4:48 pm PDT May 24, 2006

OAKLAND -- A horrifying and fascinating disease is affecting thousands of people in the Bay Area, along the Gulf Coast and in Florida. Though some doctors have claimed the malady is psychosomatic, other scientists are making headway unraveling the mystery of Morgellons Disease.

Former Oakland A's pitcher Billy Koch has it. And so do his wife and their three children. And though they can afford top medical care, doctors have no answers.

It started in Oakland four years ago. Koch saved 44 games and was the top reliever in the major leagues. His fastball wowed crowds. And then the strangeness began.

"He freaked out. He wanted to ignore it … I wanted to too. But when it comes to your kids, you gotta stop ignoring it," said Koch's wife Brandi.

[redqueen]

1. How bizarre...

I hope they manage to find some way to treat it soon. Really frightening that there are neurological effects as well.

[rockymountaindem]

2. That's incredibly odd

I hope they find some way to help all the sufferers. That's gotta be really scary for them.

[poverlay]

3. Creepy... Between that and 2 people at my wife's workplace getting

the "flesh-eating" bacteria, I'm about ready to hole up and never leave home!

[joneschick]

4. dumb question

if they don't know what it is, how do they have a name for it?:shrug:

[evlbstrd]

5. They name it for the first to identify it

or even the "first" patient.

[TrogL]

6. It's already been identified as a psychosomatic disease

The fibres are exactly that, man-made fibre.

[Howardx]

7. identified by who?

"Dermatologists claimed the filaments were all delusions, although none had studied them."

"With cooperation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Wymore's team is studying Bay Area patients and others from around the country. His first finding disputes the frequent diagnosis of delusions.
Pathologists and dermatologists and lab reports that these were textile fibers appearing in the skin of the sufferers. Now that's just not true, to be perfectly blunt about it," says Prof. Wymore.

Wymore says his tests rule out not only textile fibers, but also worms, insects, animal material and even human skin and hair. He says the filaments are not an external contamination."


why so quick to jump in and debunk?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. My first reaction is:

What are they trying to hide? What are the funding sources of the "debunkers"?

Follow the money.

[1monster]

11. This same disease came up for discussion on DU about three years

ago, when a Jacksonville, Florida televison news program did a series on it.

The disease has been known since the middle ages, but disappeared for a while.

What really surprised me was the number of people vehemently insisiting that there was no disease or parasite, just psychosomatic symptoms.

Since the majority of the doctors were dismissing Margellon's Disease patients as delusional, all citing each other in their opinions, the fact that very little reserach was done on the syndrome was obsured.

There was a suggestion made that it might be a water-born agent causing the symptoms. It might be something caused by a genetic predispostion to be susceptible to the ailment.

Whatever the cause of Margellon's Disease, I for one would be very careful about calling those who suffer from it delusional. Even psychosmatic illnesses have very real physical manifestations. People who suffer from those symptoms are not delusional.

Whatever the cause, I hope they soon find out what it is and also find a way to treat or cure it.

It wasn't all that long ago that Fibromyalgia and, as noted in the post below mine, chronic fatigue syndrome, were also considered psychosomatic, but both are now recognized as very real illnesses that can be treated, if not yet cured. If I remember correctly, both are syndromes created by the autoimmune system.

[Ready4Change]

12. How do the fibers get embedded in the patients?

What material are the fibers from? Are they cotton? Nylon? Velcro?

Gotta back up a statement like that. Link?

[emcguffie]

9. No weirder than "chronic fatigue syndrome", which is not fatigue

and which also makes you twitch all night and forget any new info you take in. Short term memory loss. Loss of IQ. Plus lots and lots and lots of werid stuff with the immune system and ATP.

Plus quite a few dead people.

But the US insists on calling it "fatigue", and has always discouraged any serious research into its cause. Thank god there are other serious researchers that they cannot control.

It does make one wonder, though, why the NIH takes the position it does. Could it have anything to do with the spread of this disease? Which, by the way, is very common, and which, by the way, the blood supply is not being screened for?

And which, by the way, is infectious?

[knitter4democracy]

10. From a search on mdconsult (Hubby's fave site):

Morgellons disease is a mysterious skin disorder that was first described more than 300 years ago. The disease is characterized by fiber-like strands extruding from the skin in conjunction with various dermatologic and neuropsychiatric symptoms. In this respect, Morgellons disease resembles and may be confused with delusional parasitosis. The association with Lyme disease and the apparent response to antibacterial therapy suggest that Morgellons disease may be linked to an undefined infectious process. Further clinical and molecular research is needed to unlock the mystery of Morgellons disease.

This is the abstract from "The mystery of Morgellons disease: infection or delusion?" published in American Journal of Clinical Dermatology on January 1st, 2006.

Freakin' weird, man.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. There was a post on this not too long ago, re. cases in TX ...

Can't find it now, don't think it had Morgellons in the title.

Why do I suspect fibrinogen (blood-clotting protein) gone awry?