Morgellons Disease
Holly Ames
News 5 at 10pm
Monday, May 22, 2006

It sounds like the makings of a science fiction movie. It's an illness that causes painful sores that produce colored fibers and sometimes host parasites. But it's not science fiction.

It's something called Morgellons Disease. While the illness is still much of a mystery, more and more people across the nation are coming forward with the symptoms.
On the left, the lip of 3 year old boy at 10X magnification.
On the right, object from same lip at 60X. Credit: Morgellons Research Foundation

Morgellons is a puzzler. While some doctors think it stems from mental illness, others think there's more to it. Some experts are even volunteering their time to get to the bottom of it.

Regardless of the cause, when you see the victims, there is no denying that there is something wrong with them.

Leigh Ann Cofield believes her mother and both of her sisters suffer from Morgellons disease.

It's a desperate situation.

She let us hear a message from her sister Crystal that was on her answering machine. In the message she says, "Please Leigh, with everything you've learned, can't you just get me the medicine. I'm going to die if you don't."

Leigh Ann Cofield believes Morgellons is killing her family. Sores cover parts of their bodies and they can't find anyone who is able or willing to help.

Leigh Ann moved from Mobile to Sheffield, Alabama last year. She wanted to be closer to her family, but it's just not possible. Leigh Ann feels that it's just too risky.

"We can't do that any more," she says. "I haven't touched my mother since August."

Leigh Ann's mother started developing the strange sores in August of 2005. Rebecca Cofield says, "It's just continuous. They hurt. They don't necessarily itch, but they do hurt. Just the emotional and the physical part of it is just very, just makes me not able to do much of anything."

Not long after Rebecca Cofield started developing the sores, two of her daughter developed them too.

Crystal Cofield McClure describes her problem, "Sores, sores on my head and my hair falling out."

Crystal says she's never had any health problems before now. She says trying to get help has been a terrible challenge.

Crystal says, "I've been treated like I'm a hypochondriac, like, you know, delusional."

Rebecca Cofield says their physicians would like to have them committed to a mental hospital.

When doctors were unable to help, Leigh Ann Cofield turned to the internet hoping to find help for her family. That's where Leigh Ann found message boards full of people looking for help and describing the same symptoms.

They called the illness Morgellons Disease. They described experiencing a "brain fog" or sorts, problems concentrating, the feeling of bugs biting their skin and painful itchy sores that produce mysterious red and blue fibers. Some of them even claimed they found parasites in their sores.

Leigh Ann Cofield says some of those bugs are called "springtails."

Leigh Ann gathered all of the information she found on the internet and took it to her family's doctors. She says they refused to look at it.

Dr. Randy Wymore is a professor at Oklahoma State University. After hearing about Morgellons, he became determined to help solve this mystery. He admits he was skeptical at first, but now he's the Volunteer Research Director for the Morgellons Foundation.

Dr. Wymore says, "Unfortunately many of this patient population has really been treated very poorly."

Dr. Wymore says Morgellons is not widely recognized by the medical community. In fact, many patients presenting the symptoms are diagnosed with delusional parasitosis.

Dr. Wymore says, "Many physicians, as soon as they hear red and blue fibers growing out of the skin, they think that's impossible, this must be delusional."

Not long after beginning his investigations, he determined there is something going on with these patients.

Dr. Wymore says, "We feel that there is evidence that something unusual is going on with these individuals."

Dr. Wymore says the fibers coming from their sores remain a mystery.

Dr. Wymore says, "I actually spent a fair bit of time this last summer collecting samples from 4 different states, from multiple different clothing retailers, used clothing, carpet, sporting goods. I never found fibers that look similar to these, and yet the ones coming from California and Texas and Washington and North Carolina, they all look very similar to one another."

Dr. Wymore and a small network of health care professionals across the United States are working to find ways to help these people, but they are limited.

Wymore says, "To do the organized, systematic research is going to involve a lot of people and unfortunately have a fairly big price tag associated with it. It's just the reality of modern biomedical research."

That coupled with the reality that many doubt Morgellons even exists, means a bleak future for the thousands looking for relief.

Rebecca Cofield says, "I don't know which direction to go at this point."

Crystal Cofield McClure says," It's just, it's pretty much ruined our lives."

Leigh Ann says, "It's devastating, it's disfiguring, it's mind debilitating and it has ruined, this disease I have found in the research has ruined lives. It has destroyed families. People have lost everything trying to find treatment for it.

When we made our trip to Sheffield, Alabama to meet this family, we were told the oldest sister Beth wasn't well enough to talk with us. Just days after our interview, she was killed in a single car accident. Authorities believe she may have had a seizure. While the Cofields have no way to prove it, they believe Morgellons caused the seizure.

If you would like more information on Morgellons, you can go to the Morgellons Foundation website at www.morgellons.org or the Morgellons research page for Oklahoma State University at www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/index.cfm.




This story can be found at: http://www.wkrg.com