The Chronic Fatigue Initiative (CFI) was an organization created and funded by the Hutchins Family Foundation to drive wide-scale research into the underlying infectious, immunological, and toxicological causes of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). CFI's goal was to disseminate its research findings to better equip the broader research community to work on mechanisms of ME/CFS and associated diagnostics, treatment, and prevention.

From 2011 to 2013, CFI conducted a large U.S. multicenter cross-sectional study to compare adults with ME/CFS from five geographically distinct clinical research sites with sex and geographic location (within 100 miles of the clinical location) matched control participants. To be eligible for study inclusion, ME/CFS participants had to have a diagnosis of ME/CFS from an expert clinician that met one or both internationally recognized case definitions: the 1994 Fukuda criteria (Fukuda et al., 1994) or the 2003 Canadian criteria (Carruthers et al., 2003) with expansion by Jason et al. (2010). A total of 401 study participants (201 ME/CFS cases, 200 controls) are included in the database, having contributed questionnaire, medical record, physical exam, and laboratory data, in addition to a wide range of biological specimens (RNA, DNA, plasma, serum, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, saliva, tears, and urine). The following table displays the number of ME/CFS participants and control participants by sex. For more information on CFI study participant recruitment, data collection, and findings, see Klimas et al. (2015).

References

• Carruthers BM, Jain AK, De Meirleir KL, Peterson DL, Klimas N, Lerner AM, Bested AC, Flor-Henry P, Joshi P, Powles ACP, Sherkey JA, van de Sande MI. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: Clinical working definition, diagnostic and treatment protocols (PDF). Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 2003; 11(1):7-36.
• Fukuda K, Straus SE, Hickie I, Sharpe MC, Dobbins JG, Komaroff A: International Chronic Fatigue Study Group. The chronic fatigue syndrome: A comprehensive approach to its definition and study. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1994; 121(12):953-959.
• Jason LA, Evans M, Porter N, Brown M, Brown A, Hunnell J, Anderson V, Lerch A, De Meirleir K, Friedberg F. The development of a revised Canadian myalgic encephalomyelitis chronic fatigue syndrome case definition. American Journal of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. 2010; 6(2):120-135.
• Klimas NG, Ironson G, Carter A, Balbin E, Bateman L, Felsenstein S, Peterson LD, Chiu K, Allen A, Cunningham K, Gottschalk CG, Fletcher M, Hornig M, Canning C, Komaroff AL. Findings from a clinical and laboratory database developed for discovery of pathogenic mechanisms in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior. 2015; 3(2):75-96.