Morgellons disease exists "only in patients' minds," study shows

What if it felt like there were tiny bugs crawling all over your body, causing oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin? That's how many people described their symptoms to government doctors several years ago, with health officials sometimes receiving up to 20 calls a day from sufferers.

Many of these people lived in California, prompting one of that state's U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein, to ask for a scientific study. In 2008, federal health officials began to study people who said they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons disease - named from a 1674 medical paper that described similar symptoms.

Morgellons disease probably a delusion, feds say

Morgellons illness - a scary sickness that simply leaves individuals with distressing patches, gives them a sensation that glitches are running all over their body, and has them seeing vibrant, threadlike fibres putting through their epidermis - isn't infected and probably isn't due to anything in the planet, according to the first administration research of the situation.

Rather, Morgellons is likely to be a psychological sickness and should probably be handled with the same pharmaceutical and psychological care that performs for individuals who experience delusions, scientists with the U.S. Facilities for Disorder Management and Avoidance said Thursday.