Epidemiology Project

The CFI-funded Epidemiology Project, led by the Harvard School of Public Health, aims to identify a large sample of men and women with CFS and to study their environmental exposures as well as their blood samples from before and after the time they became ill. The study will draw on epidemiologic data from three separate HSPH studies, including more than 20 years of longitudinal bio-samples from nurses and other health professionals, providing invaluable clues to environmental as well as biological risk factors for CFS.

CFI Cohort Recruitment

CFI is recruiting a well-characterized cohort of CFS patients (200 subjects plus 200 healthy controls nationwide). The goal is to help researchers establish a pure population of subjects who truly have the disease, ultimately enabling the discovery of pathogenic pathways.

CFS Bio-bank and Database

Cohort members will contribute biologic samples, collected by leading clinicians working at select institutions around the country, to a central bio-bank housed at Duke University. The bio-bank will be accessible to researchers around the world for future study.

A database administered at Harvard Medical School will link clinical data from the cohort to the biologic samples in the bio-bank. Together, these resources will form a unique foundation for the discovery of pathogens and pathogenic mechanisms in CFS and the identification of patients who will most likely respond to specific treatments.

Pathogen Discovery and Pathogenesis Study

Following cohort recruitment, creation of the bio-bank and population of the database, the pathogen discovery and pathogenesis study led by the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University seeks to uncover novel viruses implicated in the disease by using techniques that allow up to 20 pathogens to be searched simultaneously.

Mechanism of Illness Program

CFI will offer grants to fund new research guided by five or six general hypotheses formed by a scientific advisory board of leading scientists and clinicians. The Hutchins Family Fellow for Infectious Disease grant is the first of many grants to be funded by this program. This year’s inaugural recipient will collaborate closely with Columbia's Center for Infection and Immunity on the pathogen discovery research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.