Morgellon disease resembles scenes from horror films. People have an itchy whole body. The feeling is as if someone is constantly crawling under the skin. Then abscesses appear. When they break through, multi-colored threads and dark grains similar to sand begin to emerge from them. The wounds partially heal, leaving scars and scars, but soon appear elsewhere
It all started five years ago, when Mary Leitao took out a fiber that looked like dandelion fluff from an abscess on her two-year-old son's lip. After meeting with three pediatricians, three allergists, two dermatologists and many misdiagnoses, she realized that her Drew had a serious problem. Sores began to appear all over his body. When they burst, white, blue and black threads came out of them. The kid complained of itching and said that beetles were crawling under his skin.
Mary Leitao continued to go to the doctors, but no one believed her. The last person she turned to for help, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, not only refused to see Drew, but, based on a pile of medical records and extracts, suggested that she had Munchausen syndrome, a psychiatric disease in which the parent, to get the attention of doctors, he pretends that his child is sick.
Mary found out what was going on with Drew in March 2004. After opening the site on the Internet, it turned out that she was not the only one fighting with the doctors. There were thousands like her son. Drew Leitao has Morgellon disease.
In the mid-30s of the last century, the British physician S. Kellett argued in the Annals of British Medicine that for the first time Morgellon's disease was described by French doctors in the 17th century. Then, however, it was about the appearance of black hair from the skin of children. The first to suffer from this disease were the children of the Morgellon family in Languedoc. And although the "early" form of the disease is not so similar to the modern one, the name remained.
Morgellon disease resembles scenes from horror films. People have an itchy whole body. The feeling is as if someone is constantly crawling under the skin. Then abscesses appear. When they break through, multi-colored threads and dark grains similar to sand begin to emerge from them. The wounds partially heal, leaving scars and scars, but soon appear elsewhere.
It is not textile fibers that come out of the sick, as they thought at first, not worms or insects, not fragments of human skin or hair. Threads do not appear from the outside. They consist of some substance that is formed in the body, possibly as a result of an incomprehensible infection.
The doctors showed the threads to the forensic scientists.
In the laboratory, they were first subjected to spectroscopic analysis, but no similarity was found with any of the 800 fibers in the database. Then chromatographic analysis was done. The result was the same. The database registered about 90 thousand organic substances, but the threads did not resemble any of them.
Other symptoms of Morgellon's disease include chronic fatigue, which causes patients to quit work and stay at home; a sharp decrease in mental abilities, especially memory; severe depression, joint swelling, muscle cramps and hair loss.
The wounds of the sick.
RAVINGS OF A MADMAN
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the exact number of patients is currently unknown. On the website of the Center for the Study of Morgellon Disease, which is run by Mary Leitao, 8,000 people have registered. But this, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. Someone does not have computers, someone does not know about the existence of the center, and someone simply gave up on everything, believes that nothing will help him, and intends to end his life. There are patients not only in all 50 American states, but also in Great Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands.
How to treat a mysterious disease, doctors do not know. And in general, in most cases they claim that "insects" and threads with grains are nothing more than a figment of the sick imagination of patients. In medicine, this is called delusional parasitosis. After such a diagnosis, many no longer want to go to the hospital. Patients try to heal themselves - they burn furniture, clothes and carpets, move to other apartments and other houses, but the strange ailment persists.
Some claim that Morgellon's disease is a new type of biological weapon.
"Threads" from wounds
Former Auckland baseball player Billy Koch is one of those affected by a disease known as Morgellons desease. The disease also affected his wife and three children. Although the family can afford expensive medical treatment, doctors still cannot answer their questions. It all started four years ago.
Billy Koch played baseball with success, but then strange things began to happen. He started having uncontrollable muscle cramps, due to which he could not even sleep. And non-healing wounds appeared on the skin, from which periodically, especially after bathing, some small dark threads came out, reports WSOC-TV. “This is the worst thing I've seen in my life. A black substance was coming out of my skin,”says his wife Brandi.
The couple consulted several doctors, but all claimed that nothing threatened their lives and that they were talking about hallucinations. Meanwhile, in the United States, about 3 thousand families are experiencing such unexplained symptoms. The number of registered patients as of May 29 was 4131, mostly they live in Texas, California and Florida. Patients were recorded in all 50 US states.
Isolated cases of infection have also been reported in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands. Professor Randy Wymor, head of the Morgellons Research Foundation's research program, became the first scientist to investigate the mysterious disease. According to him, this is the biggest mystery he has ever faced. He now leads a group of doctors who are researching Morgellon disease.
The doctor also says that skin problems are not the worst symptoms. According to him, the action of a neurotoxin or a microorganism can affect muscles and memory. Wymore recently sent an open letter to doctors who may be facing Morgellon's disease. He urged to take this disease seriously, stating that people suffering from it may have fallen prey to a new incurable disease.
CONSPIRACY THEORY
For 400 years, medicine has made little headway in the study of a mysterious disease. And it provides rich food for conspiracy theorists. Some call Morgellon's disease "the plague of the XXI century", others consider it a new type of biological weapon; still others claim that God sent this attack on mankind steeped in sins. There are also those who believe that this ailment is of cosmic origin or that all this noise is nothing more than attempts by filmmakers to advertise their horror films.
There are many theories, but none have yet been confirmed. Patients still complain of itching and scratch their skin until they bleed; doctors calm them down and advise not to panic. Healthy (for now) Americans, meanwhile, fear that Morgellon's disease will soon turn into an epidemic.
Sergey SVETIN