The heart of a nationwide debate on a strange new medical condition centers right here in Tulsa.
Dr. Randy Wymore is a Morgellon’s researcher at the OSU Center for Health Sciences.
He says, “The symptoms are very unusual. It’s difficult for a lot of people, and physicians for that matter, to wrap their minds around the fact that it could exist.”
[ Hear the entire interview with Dr. Randy Wymore. ]
Patients report fibers that look like string growing out of their skin and a crawling sensation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just released the results of the first study on Morgellon's.
The summary says the study was inconclusive.
The CDC hired an HMO company in northern California to conduct the study.
“Amongst pretty much all the HMO’s in the country that I ever heard that got e-mails or phone calls, or talked to people about what their feelings, they were one of the most aggressively pursuing the delusional angle.”
Many participants backed out of the study.
Dr. Wymore says, “A lot of media types have been picking up and saying things like delusional disorder, and Morgellon’s is all in the head. But, that’s not actually the conclusion that they state.”
Wymore says he was part of a group that sorted through the data.
“I wasn’t surprised by the results because in 2009 I was part of a six member external peer review panel that looked at their data.”
Wymore says part of the problem is researchers only collected fibers from twelve participants.
“It’s unclear to me that there were any actual Morgellon’s patients in the study.”