The challenge of integrating disparate high-content data: epidemiological, clinical and laboratory data collected during an in-hospital study of chronic fatigue syndrome

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating illness characterized by multiple unexplained symptoms including fatigue, cognitive impairment and pain. People with CFS have no characteristic physical signs or diagnostic laboratory abnormalities, and the etiology and pathophysiology remain unknown. CFS represents a complex illness that includes alterations in homeostatic systems, involves multiple body systems and results from the combined action of many genes, environmental factors and risk-conferring behavior. In order to achieve understanding of complex illnesses, such as CFS, studies must collect relevant epidemiological, clinical and laboratory data and then integrate, analyze and interpret the information so as to obtain meaningful clinical and biological insight. This issue of Pharmacogenomics represents such an approach to CFS. Data was collected during a 2-day in-hospital study of persons with CFS, other medically and psychiatrically unexplained fatiguing illnesses and nonfatigued controls identified from the general population of Wichita, KS, USA. While in the hospital, the participants' psychiatric status, sleep characteristics and cognitive functioning was evaluated, and biological samples were collected to measure neuroendocrine status, autonomic nervous system function, systemic cytokines and peripheral blood gene expression. The data generated from these assessments was made available to a multidisciplinary group of 20 investigators from around the world who were challenged with revealing new insight and algorithms for integration of this complex, high-content data and, if possible, identifying molecular markers and elucidating pathophysiology of chronic fatigue. The group was divided into four teams with representation from the disciplines of medicine, mathematics, biology, engineering and computer science. The papers in this issue are the culmination of this 6-month challenge, and demonstrate that data integration and multidisciplinary collaboration can indeed yield novel approaches for handling large, complex datasets, and reveal new insight and relevance to a complex illness such as CFS.