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- Last Updated: 19 March 2012 19 March 2012
The Chronic Fatigue Initiative has planned research projects in several areas, beginning with building a "bio-bank" containing biologic samples from a "well-characterized" cohort of 200 CFS patients and 200 healthy controls, collected by leading clinicians from around the country. Dr. Nancy Klimas is in charge of cohort recruitment. These samples can then be used for study by researchers around the country.
Creation of the bio-bank and a database to link information about the patients to the samples will be followed by research to discover and study possible pathogens involved in the illness.
An Epidemiology Project will utilize epidemiologic data from the Harvard School of Public Health to study possible environmental as well as biological risk factors for CFS.
A "Mechanism of Illness" program will work with a scientific advisory board of leading researchers and clinicians to formulate hypotheses and fund new grants for research to test these hypotheses.
Participating institutions include the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, Harvard School of Public Health, Stanford Medical School, Harvard Medical School, Duke University, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Miami and University of Utah. Lead researchers include such familiar names as Drs. Nancy Klimas, Lucinda Bateman, Dan Peterson, Jose Montoya and Ian Lipkin.
Notice about names
The Massachusetts ME/CFS & FM Association would like to clarify the use of the various acronyms for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Chronic Fatigue & Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) on this site. When we generate our own articles on the illness, we will refer to it as ME/CFS, the term now generally used in the United States. When we are reporting on someone else’s report, we will use the term they use. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies, including the CDC, are currently using ME/CFS.
Massachusetts ME/CFS & FM Association changed its name in July, 2018, to reflect this consensus.