An Emerging Health Crisis -- Where's Dr. House When You
Need Him?
If it weren't so tragic, it could be the story line in a
Stephen King novel. Each day, the National Pediculosis
Association (NPA) is contacted by individuals describing the
torment and horror of oozing skin lesions, sensations of bugs
biting and crawling under their skin and doctors who diagnose
it as nothing more than a delusion.
Needham, MA (PRWEB) May 19, 2005 -- If it weren't so
tragic, it could be the story line in a Stephen King novel.
Each day the National Pediculosis Association (NPA) is
contacted by individuals describing the torment and horror of
oozing skin lesions, sensations of bugs biting and crawling
under their skin and doctors who diagnose it as nothing more
than a delusion.
In a 1994 Ladies Home Journal article about children who
suffered seizures after being exposed to Lindane, a treatment
for lice and scabies, the NPA provided a toll free number to
launch the first national reporting registry for lice and
scabies outbreaks, product failure, and adverse reactions to
treatments. Adverse reaction reports to the NPA registry about
Lindane led to the FDA giving Lindane a black box and its
strongest warning. The NPA registry available at
www.headlice.org also provided the earliest reports of
head lice having developed resistance to the most widely used
pediculicides.
However, almost as soon as the NPA's registry was launched,
reports of a bizarre health problem began to surface.
Individuals reported biting and crawling sensations --
symptoms for which they could find no explanation and assumed
were related to lice and scabies. But such symptoms were
inconsistent with lice or scabies, signaling a very different
problem.
The compelling nature of the reports prompted the NPA to
contact the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)in 1995 and on
numerous occasions thereafter. Deborah Z. Altschuler, NPA's
president says the CDC as an agency has not shared the NPA's
concern.
Unable to find any studies where such a population had their
skin assessed in a single site clinical setting, the NPA in
2000 conducted its own clinical research in conjunction with
the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The research
identified Collembola (also known as springtail) in 18 of the
20 participants. According to Stephen Hopkin, author of The
Biology of Springtails, Collembola are among the most
widespread and abundant terrestrial arthropods. Collembola can
be large enough to be seen on the backside of a leaf, but also
minute enough to require the use of a microscope. The majority
of them feed on fungal hyphae or decaying plant material, but
they can also feast off of each other. Known mainly as
soil-dwellers, they can swarm and aggregate in the millions.
Referred to as decomposers, their primary function is to break
down organic matter.
The report on the NPA research was published in the Journal of
the New York Entomological Society in the spring of 2004. (http://www.headlice.org/news/2004/pr071204.htm)
The report spoke to the challenges of the trailblazing
research and demonstrated how easy it had been for these
minute arthropods to remain overlooked by the medical
community for over a century and also by the entomologists who
had not utilized the NPA's approach. Entomologists have
thought it impossible for Collembola to colonize humans,
although they've acknowledged them as first of the decomposers
to appear on human corpses. The research provides evidence of
tremendous numbers of these organisms concealed, if not
disguised, in their own aggregations. Yet the CDC maintains
the position that Collembola cannot be human parasites and
therefore they are of no medical importance. While the
presence of Collembola in human skin continues to be met with
skepticism by some collembologists; the relationship of
Collembola to humans is an area of research the NPA maintains
has not been adequately explored. Where's Dr. House when you
need him?
It was in the late 1800’s that people with the sensation of
bugs in their skin were first classified as having a
delusional illness, a diagnosis still accepted although now
challenged by the NPA’s research. Many physicians have never
heard of Collembola – let alone expect to find them in
humans.
Dermatologists and entomologists appear comfortable diagnosing
Delusional Parasitosis (DOP)on the basis of the reported
biting and crawling and without consultation with a
psychiatric specialist. Some physicians will attempt
therapeutic trials with pediculicides, scabicides, fungicides
and mega doses of antibiotics, using treatment failure as a
basis for a delusory diagnosis.
Individuals can often pinpoint a time and place when they
first noticed the feeling of being bitten. A young mother in
New York said the first time she felt the skin problem was in
the middle of the night while sleeping in a hotel. Others
first noticed symptoms after taking in a stray animal. Many
have had water or sewage problems in their homes. A number of
nurses reporting these symptoms remember caring for a patient
who had a shaven head or was covered with skin sores. Reports
also come in from individuals who have moved into new homes
built on land previously used for agriculture or cattle
grazing. Others, and most worrisome, report symptoms after
being exposed to someone with this condition.
Michelle of Canada states: “I’ve watched my father go from a
happy, balanced, reasonably healthy individual to the brink of
suicide because of this condition. He had to quit working at a
good job and is teetering on financial ruin. He has been
treated so cruelly and inhumanely from so called
‘care-givers’, that if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I probably
wouldn’t have believed it. This disease is destroying people’s
lives. There is no help, not even basic curiosity, from the
majority of the medical community. New diseases, bacteria,
virus strains pop up all the time, so why is this situation so
outlandish to the doctors? It’s time for the medical community
to stand up and acknowledge this disease, and start doing
their jobs.”
A nurse from the state of Washington says that both she and
her ten year old suffer with this condition and came down with
it at the same time. “I’m outraged that my human rights have
not been taken into consideration because my complaint of
having parasites did not fit into the medical community’s way
of thinking. This in turn caused my family to abandon me as
‘crazy’. I have not been allowed to see my five beautiful
grandchildren for 2 ½ years now.”
The NPA reports advances in its image research technique since
the original digital imaging work was done in 2000. However,
interpretation of slides and digital images still requires
skill and experience. Without it people are left misdiagnosed,
misguided and with secondary complications from the arsenal of
chemicals and pesticides they feel forced to use in
desperation. To date, the NPA reports that Collembola in human
skin appear impervious to treatment.
Whether a crisis of delusional illness or Collembola in human
skin, the longer it takes for the medical community and the
Centers for Disease Control to take this seriously, the more
widespread and well established it appears to become.
The National Pediculosis Association is a 501 (c)3 nonprofit
organization serving the public since 1983. It's website is
www.headlice.org.
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