Delusional parasitosis: six-year experience with 23 consecutive cases at an academic medical center
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Delusional parasitosis is a syndrome with which most infectious diseases physicians and microbiologists are familiar. However, little is known about the epidemiology of this disorder, and most reports consist of case reports or small series. We conducted a case series with long-term questionnaire follow-up of delusional parasitosis patients presenting to our academic medical center. METHODS: From 1994 through 1999, 23 patients with primary delusional parasitosis (as defined by DSM IV criteria) were identified through the Infectious Diseases Clinic or Emergency Room at the University of Washington and cases were analyzed for prospectively established demographic, clinical, and social variables of interest. RESULTS: Of 23 patients, 15 were women and eight were men. Mean duration (+/- standard deviation) of symptoms was 2.6+/-2.8 years (median 1.5), with shorter duration related to improved prognosis. Mean symptom duration in women was 3.1+/-3.0 years versus 1.5+/-1.5 years in men. Patients saw an average of six physicians before presenting to our center. Reduced social interactions were common, but employment affect was not significant. Treatment with pimozide or gabapentin combined with antidepressants appeared to be effective in some cases. CONCLUSIONS: This is the largest study of primary delusional parasitosis originating from an academic medical center, and highlights the burden of disease borne by patients and the healthcare system.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".