ATLANTA —Imagine having the feeling that tiny bugs are crawling on your body, that you have oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin. At one point several years ago, government doctors were getting up to 20 calls a day from people saying they had such symptoms.
In 2008, federal health officials began to study people saying they were affected by this freakish condition, called Morgellons. The study cost nearly $600,000. Its long-awaited results, released Wednesday, conclude that Morgellons exists only in the patients’ minds.
“We found no infectious cause,” said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team.
The study appears in the journal PLoS One.
Denver Post wire services
