1525 – Ekbom Syndrome With Folie à Deux: a Case Report

Abstract

Delusional parasitosis (Ekbom Syndrome) was firstly described by Thirbierge in 1894 as acarophobia. Nowadays this syndrome is not considered an independent diagnostic category and is defined in DSM-IV-TR as a delusional disorder, somatic subtype. Folie à Deux is characterized by the “transmission” of delirious thoughts from a “primary patient”, the inductor to a “secondary patient”, the induced one. The association between delusional parasitosis and Folie ... Deux is an uncommon syndrome that was described by Skott in 1978.

Objectives

To describe a case of Ekbom Syndrome with Folie à Deux, between mother and daughter, that has the mother as the “primary patient” even with borderline intelligence and the daughter as the induced patient, but without any cognitive deficits.

Aims

To highlight that some cases of Folie à Deux can occur in a strictly affective dominance fashion relationship.

Methods

Case report.

Results

MRC, 46 years old, illiterate, was referred to the outpatient psychiatric clinic of the University Hospital of the Federal University of Alagoas-Brazil, by a dermatologist of the same hospital because of hyperchromic scaly pruritic skin lesions in legs and back with no findings at skin biopsy that the patient attributed to “bugs” under her skin and that her daughter also believed that existed even when her mother showed her desquamative skin as being the bug.

Conclusions

The dominance between the primary patient and the induced one can be of affective nature only but not cognitive nature in Folie ... Deux with Ekbom Syndrome.