Posted by Librarian on 4/2/2002, 4:18 pm

This article appeared in the National Examiner during late 1994. The names (personal Identifiers) have been removed. Horrific Disease Feels like Insects are eating you alive. By: Shelby Loosch Doctors across the U.S. are itching to get their hands on a cure for a myserious condition that has its victims crawling out of their skins. "It feels like a million spiders on you, like your clothes are biting you," says ______ _______of Chandler, Arizona. "I literally watched fibers come off my stomach. My hair fell out in gobs." ______tried the prescription pesticide lindane, which is effective against lice and scabies -- but to no avail. Experts are baffled by reports of the bizarre bug-biting disease, which has struck people in 22 states, and even pushed victims to attempted suicide! Common symptoms include peeling, itching and scarring, blotchy red rashes, bizarre lesions, black specks on the skin and insect-like sensations that feel like bites or pinpricks. "What it is and what is the cause of it, whether it's been due to bugs or not, has never been found out,"says Dr. ________an epidemiologist for the _________State Health Department. Some doctors believe the condition is caused by an insect called Collembola or Springtail, which normally feeds on plants. Others have found no medical evidence of parasites and say the problem is delusory parasitosis, a psychiatric disorder in which the victims believe their bodies are infested with live organisms. "We have a stream of people bringing samples of things they say are crawling out of their body," says Dr. Roger Nasci, an entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control's branch office in Fort Collins, Colorado. "Some will dump a Mason jar of lint and say: 'They are crawling on me.' "We sort through the things and find only bits of hair, clothing, skin and occasional dust mites. Nothing we can identify matches the description of what they are saying." But victims of the creepy-crawly conditions insist the problem isn't just in their heads. "It's destroying ___ says _____ of _____. "These things act like worms. Something is in there and I've got to know what it is. If I knew I had some hope, I could go on. This is a living hell on earth. They've got to find a solution soon!"