There is a backup file for application status.

As root user, copy /var/lib/dpkg/status-old to /var/lib/dpkg/status and refresh the application list.

(edit), this is what i did when i had that error and it saved me. When i looked at my status file, it had some corruption (non-ascii characters) in it. This may not be the best solution. Searching the web for these errors also yields the suggestion to run:

dpkg --configure -a

So YMMV, HTH, HAND. :P