Mattos Lymphoedema and delusional parasitosis

The false and fixed belief of being infected/infested by one or many different living organisms, such as insects or parasites, is not a common condition. Although several cases have been recorded since the end of the nineteenth century, it was the Swedish psychiatrist Karl-Axel Ekbom who first systematically studied the presenile syndrome of delusional dermatozoid parasitic infestation in 1938 (Ekbom, 2003). This disorder was named as delusional parasitosis (DP) in 1946 (Wilson and Miller, 1946). Several different names were used for DP over the years, but Ekbom’s name has become the eponym attached to the condition referred to as DP.