People with Chronic Complex Diseases deserve the right to live full, productive lives.
OMF’s score of 100 serves as an indicator of trust, demonstrating our longstanding commitment to ensuring accountability, transparency, and measures of financial health, including stability, efficiency and sustainability.
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS) affects over 20 million people.
Established in 2012, Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) leads the largest, concerted worldwide nonprofit effort to diagnose, treat, and prevent ME / CFS and related chronic, complex diseases such as Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia and Post COVID.
OMF adds urgency to the search for answers by driving transformational philanthropy and investments into global research. We have raised over $28 Million from private donors, and facilitated and funded the establishment of five prestigious ME / CFS Collaborative Research Centers.
Ronald W. Davis, PhD
Director
Innovative, collaborative, multi-disciplinary research
Ronald G. Tompkins, MD, ScD
Wenzhong Xiao, PhD
Co-Directors
Clinical and scientific mechanistic studies towards discovering new treatments
Jonas Bergquist, MD, PhD
Director
Research for biomarkers in body and brain
Alain Moreau, PhD
Director
Clinical and scientific intervention studies
Chris Armstrong, PhD
Director
Precision personalized medicine research program
The current COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand how a viral infection may convert to ME/CFS in some patients.
The five ME/CFS Collaborative Centers have begun a unique, extensive, in-depth longitudinal molecular study following COVID-19 patients. Their shared goal is to determine the pathways involved in maintaining long-term symptoms in some patients, possibly converting to ME/CFS. They seek to learn about these pathways so as to develop biomarkers, novel drug targets, new treatment, and prevention strategies.
18 world-renowned scientists
2 Nobel laureates
5 National Academy
of Sciences members
Averting a second pandemic: Open Medicine Foundation leads groundbreaking international study of Long COVID’s conversion to ME/CFS AGOURA HILLS, CALIF. — Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is
From the Desk of Ronald W. Davis, Ph.D.,Chair of Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) Scientific Advisory Board I am honored to share that my research into
Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is excited to share that Dr. Alain Moreau’s paper Profile of circulating microRNAs in myalgic encephalomyelitis and their relation to symptom severity,
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Averting a second pandemic:
Open Medicine Foundation leads groundbreaking international study of
Long COVID’s conversion to ME/CFS
AGOURA HILLS, CALIF. — Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is leading a large-scale international collaborative study investigating the potential conversion of Post-Acute Sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection — more commonly known as Long COVID or Post-COVID Syndrome — to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a chronic, life-altering disease with no known cause, diagnostic test or FDA approved treatments available.
Up to 2.5 million people in the U.S. alone suffer from ME/CFS; the COVID-19 pandemic could at least double that number. An estimated 35 percent of Americans who had COVID-19 have failed to fully recover several months after infection, prompting many to call it “a potential second pandemic.”
OMF recognized a familiar health crisis emerging, one with eerie similarities to ME/CFS. This crisis presented a unique opportunity to understand how a viral infection — in this case COVID-19 — may develop into ME/CFS in some patients. The goal is to find targeted treatments for ME/CFS patients and ultimately prevent its onset in people infected with SARS-CoV-2 or other infections.
The federal government is only now investing in Post-COVID research, with no focus on its connection to ME/CFS. OMF has already engaged researchers for the largest-scale study of its kind, solely supported by private donors who have contributed over one million dollars to date. When fully funded, the five million dollar, three-year study will be conducted across the globe at OMF funded Collaborative Research Centers, led by some of the world’s top researchers and ME/CFS experts.
BACKGROUND
In a significant percentage of patients, infections preceded their development of ME/CFS. For example, according to the CDC about one in ten infected with Epstein-Barr virus, Ross River virus, or Coxiella burnetti develop symptoms that meet the criteria for ME/CFS.
THE STUDY
The ability to follow the development of ME/CFS from a known viral infection is unprecedented to date and crucial to researchers’ understanding of the disease. The focus of this study is to find the biological differences between persons returning to good health after COVID-19 and persons who remained ill more than six months after infection and developed ME/CFS. Understanding these alterations in key pathways can lead to groundbreaking discoveries including new biomarkers, drug targets, and prevention and treatment strategies.
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About Open Medicine Foundation
Established in 2012, Open Medicine Foundation leads the largest, concerted worldwide nonprofit effort to diagnose, treat, and prevent ME/CFS and related chronic, complex diseases such as Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Post COVID. OMF adds urgency to the search for answers by driving transformational philanthropy into global research. We have raised over $28 Million from private donors and facilitated and funded the establishment of five prestigious ME/CFS Collaborative Research Centers around the world. To learn more, visit www.omf.ngo.
CONTACT:
Heather Ah San
Development and Communications Manager
1-650-242-8669
