In this OMF Journal Club, Dr. Danielle Meadows walks through "Facility-Measured Sleep Electroencephalographic Microstructures in Long COVID" (Sun et al., 2026), a paper from Dr. Janet Mullington's team in collaboration with OMF's Computational Research Center for Complex Diseases.

Why do people with Long COVID and ME/CFS wake up unrefreshed, even when a standard sleep study looks close to normal? A 2026 study in the journal SLEEP points to the fine-grained structure of sleep itself.

Instead of studying one biological system at a time, multi-omics looks at many systems simultaneously to identify patterns. As a multi-system chronic complex disease, multi-omics is incredibly valuable in ME/CFS research.

Multi-omics is a style of research that combines multiple layers of biological data—including genomics (genes), proteomics (proteins), and metabolomics (metabolites)---to build a complete picture of what is happening inside the body.

These survey results go directly into CTN Lite trial design, and we continue to learn from patterns in your responses. They shape the outcome measures we select, the way we define and track PEM, and how we build trial protocols that can accommodate patients across the full severity spectrum.

Nearly 97% of respondents reported that our staged model covered or mostly covered their experience well. Almost 90% felt the proposed combination of tests would capture their experience very well or somewhat well.

Nearly 1,700 of you completed our deep dive survey on post-exertional symptom worsening. In the survey we presented two frameworks: a staged model of post-exertional worsening, and a proposed set of outcome measures for decentralized treatment trials.

In ME/CFS clinical trials, a DSMB can be a critical safeguard for participants’ wellbeing, particularly in studies that are investigating drugs that haven’t been used frequently or at all in the disease. It can also add a layer of scientific credibility to trials.

A DSMB is an independent group of medical and scientific experts who watch over a clinical trial while it's happening. They regularly review incoming data to make sure participants aren't being harmed and that the study is running fairly and ethically.