Announcing OMF's First ME/CFS Clinical Trial!

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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS) Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia Leading Research. Delivering Hope.Open Medicine Foundation® Canada

Driving research of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS),
Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia and Long COVID.

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Ocular Motor Study

Study AIM

The aim of this project is to fully characterise eye movement changes in ME/CFS on two consecutive days, identifying an ocular motor signature that is unique to the disorder.

LEAD INVESTIGATORS
  • Christopher Armstrong, PhD
  • Joanne Fielding
  • Meaghan Clough
Updates and Potential
  • Currently recruiting participants for this study.
  • Preliminary trials on ME/CFS patients have already identified highly distinctive ocular motor changes in people with ME/CFS.
  • It appears that a fatigue phenotype will be able to be monitored using ocular motor testing.
  • A larger trial has begun with data collection ongoing and biofluidcollection beginning. collection beginning.
STUDY HYPOTHESIS AND DESCRIPTION

Ocular motor (eye movement) assessment can be used in the diagnosis of various neurological diseases. Eye movement requires signaling across a vast, well-defined neural network that incorporates over 50% of the brain. Damage at any point across this extensive network manifests as abnormalities in eye movement. In a given disease/disorder, this manifests in a unique eye movement signature that can be measured using high powered eye-tracking technologies, allowing the quantification of even the subtlest of changes. This is especially relevant for those with ME/CFS as symptoms can often be subtle and prone to fluctuation (i.e. tending to worsen following exertion).

A defined ocular motor signature for ME/CFS would provide the first, objective, quantifiable marker for this disease that can be used to provide diagnostic certainty, provide a sensitive measure of progression or future treatment effect, and to inform the pathophysiological underpinnings of the disease.

The aim of this project, therefore, is to fully characterise eye movement changes in ME/CFS on two consecutive days, identifying an ocular motor signature that is unique to the disorder.

OBJECTIVES

A closeup photo of a person's eye.

  1. Identify fatigue signatures in ME/CFS using simple and repetitive ocular motor tasks over time.
  2. Identify cognitive control changes in ME/CFS using validated cognitive ocular motor tasks.
  3. Characterise eye movement changes due to PEM induced by cognitive exertion.
  4. Develop a diagnostic algorithm and task set that incorporates a variety of ocular motor task signatures in ME/CFS using machine learning techniques.
  5. Combine biofluid collections with 2-day ocular motor tests for metabolite and immune marker analysis.

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Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) Form 

Microvesicles and viral sequencing
Microvesicles are a type of extracellular vesicle that is released from the cell membrane. Vesicles are small, fluid-filled sacs or vacuoles within the body. Sequencing is a technique used to determine the exact sequence of bases (A, C, G, and T) in a DNA (or viral) molecule.
NMR Metabolomics
NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) is an instrument/tool used to perform metabolic studies, metabolic profiling, and metabolomics in biofluids and tissues for more than 40 years using magnetic fields. There is a very close connection between metabolic measurements and NMR. This connection has flourished because of NMR’s many unique strengths for characterizing complex mixtures’ chemical composition.
Proteomics
The large-scale study of proteins, which are large, complex molecules that are required for structure, function, and regulation of the human body's tissues and organs.
Immune cell profiling
The immune system has many important regulatory roles in disease development and progression. Given the emergence of effective immune therapies, reliable predictors of response are needed. Immune cell profiling determines response by evaluating immune cell populations from treated and untreated samples. For our purposes, we will evaluate the white blood cell response to the viral infection using a process called “Cytof.”
Leukocyte Genomics
A leukocyte is a colorless cell circulating in the blood and body fluids and is involved in counteracting foreign substances and disease. A genome is all genetic material of an organism. Genomics is a biology field focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. Therefore, leukocyte genomics is the study of all genetic material of leukocytes.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics is a way to study metabolism – that is, through measuring amounts of the metabolites (small molecules) produced by our bodies as we convert food into energy and other molecules that our cells need to survive. Metabolomics technology is ‘large-scale,’ meaning that several thousand metabolites can be measured from a single sample of e.g., blood or urine.
Micro RNA
Cells use Micro RNA to control whether a particular gene is making too much, too little or the normal amount of its protein at a particular time.
Autoantibodies
Antibodies that react with self-molecules and that occur in healthy individuals and are referred to as natural antibodies or autoantibodies.
Extracellular DNA for viral reactivation and Mitochondrial DNA
exDNA (extracellular DNA), exDNA is often secreted actively and is used to perform several tasks, thereby offering an attractive target or tool for biotechnological, medical, environmental, and general microbiological applications. Viruses are intracellular parasites that rely to a significant extent on the host cell for replication. Viral reactivation occurs when an active replication of the viral genome results in a lytic (degradation of the cell) infection characterized by the release of new progeny (descendant) virus particles.