Erika Engelhaupt, National Geographic: A few years ago, a man began telling his family members a horrifying tale: There are bugs living inside him. […] He shows the classic signs of what scientists call delusory parasitosis, or Ekbom syndrome, an unwavering but incorrect belief that the patient’s body has been infested with something. For years, entomologists have insisted that these delusions aren’t as rare as psychiatrists and the public may think. And now, a study by the Mayo Clinic suggests they’re right. The first population-based study of the condition’s prevalence suggests that about 27 out of a hundred thousand Americans a year have delusions of an infestation. That would mean around 89,000 people in the U.S. right now are plagued by the condition. For many sufferers of such delusions, the infestation takes the form of insects or mites, usually tiny and often described as biting or crawling on the skin. Others report feeling worms or leeches or some kind of unknown parasite. Many of the afflicted turn up, eventually, in an entomologist’s office. And as the entomologists tell them, only two kinds of arthropods actually infest humans: lice and a mite that causes scabies. Both are easy to identify and cause characteristic symptoms. Bedbugs or fleas might infest a house, but they don’t actually live on or inside the human body; they just feed on us and leave. Likewise, there are mites that live on our skin, especially the face, but they’re a normal part of everyone’s body, much like the bacteria living in our guts.
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Source:: Slashdot