To Physicians
This foundation is frequently contacted by clinicians seeking treatment advice for patients believed to have Morgellons disease. Unfortunately, at this time there is no generally accepted treatment for this disease, although antibiotics, anti-parasitics and anti-fungals have been helpful to some patients (see our FAQ section for more information). One thing that we know for certain is that Morgellons is NOT delusional parasitosis.
We need your help.
If you believe that you have a patient with Morgellons disease, we would encourage you to take one or more of the following steps:
1- Contact the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to share your clinical observations by emailing them at morgellonssyndrome@cdc.gov. This information can be an important part of CDC’s current investigation into Morgellons disease.
2- Publish your observations and findings in medical journals to help raise awareness of this disease.
3- Contact your professional association and ask for help dealing with this medical condition.
4- If you are a clinician, please email our medical advisory board at Doctors@Morgellons.org with any ideas that you may have on how we can better deal with emerging disease.
We periodically need samples collected by physicians for our ongoing research. If you are a physician and would like to participate by providing samples from your Morgellons patients, please write doctors@morgellons.org for more information
We appreciate your assistance with helping us find answers for all those who suffer from this terrible illness.
Message from William T. Harvey, MD, MPH, MS, Chairman of the Board:
As clinicians, we presently characterize an illness by its time course (history and symptoms), observable physical abnormalities (signs), technical measurement aberrancies (lab, EMG, etc.). Curiously, although Delusions of Parasitosis (or DP, which can be a misdiagnosis for patients with Morgellons disease) has been in common use for decades; few such facts make up its definition. Such is not the case with Morgellons disease, as many elements of this disease have been collected and collated. Although the final case definition of this disease is still "in process", it includes patterns of abnormalities outside of the skin component. The typical diagnosis of Morgellons patients as DP patients has resulted in a strictly psychiatric label, and ineffective treatment. By simply avoiding the trap of assuming all the illness is psychiatric, any astute clinician will get a thorough history of all problems bothering the patient. The accompanying malaise, fever, measurable memory deficit, tachycardias, elevated fasting glucose and insulin, and elevated cytokines TNF-alpha and IL-6...among many others...will lead far from a solely psychiatric diagnosis.
This now becomes a primary battleground of the so-called “evidence-based-medicine.” Take care that, as thinkers and scientists, your search is via facts...as best we can find such...and not a few scattered unfounded assumptions focused on a single disease element.
Our power as physicians to resolve illnesses is our ability to think, not to cookbook our medicine. The latter is not evidence-based medicine. The truth, as it always has, sits in front of us.