A series of 24 papers on ME/CFS called “Advances in ME/CFS Research and Clinical Care,” published in 2018-2019 in the online (open access, peer-reviewed) journals Frontiers in Neurology and Frontiers in Pediatrics, is in the running to win a $100,000 prize! The prize money must be used to fund a scientific conference on the topic. If it wins, Ken Friedman, the topic editor, has indicated he will donate the money to the International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (IACFS/ME) to help fund their 2020 International conference!
The award is based upon the decision of the editorial board, BUT INFLUENCED BY READER INTEREST (clicks, downloads, shares)…so please click, share or download. It also helps to post article links on Facebook or Twitter, retweet, and discuss in blogs and on Reddit and Google+. All these metrics are tracked and count toward the impact score. We can help by viewing/downloading articles, and encouraging others to do so, especially viewers outside the U.S.
The editors of Frontiers determine the winner of the prize; there is no nomination process. The most active, collaborative and impactful research topics from the last year are shortlisted and then the Jury, drawn from members of the Frontiers Editorial Board, is tasked with choosing the final winner. Finalists are selected and judged on scientific and editorial excellence, international reach, subject novelty, and interdisciplinary of their Research Topic.
For a complete list of papers with links, visit https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/7718/advances-in-mecfs-research-and-clinical-care#articles. This special issue was edited by Drs. Kenneth Friedman, Cindy Bateman, Alison Bested and Zaher Nahle.
The papers will be collected and published as a monograph, and cover a wide variety of topics in ME/CFS research. Find several that you are interested in and click away!
- A brief history of the struggle for recognition of ME/CFS as a disease, and the struggles to establish ME/CFS research and clinical care.
- Identifying the cause or trigger(s) of ME/CFS.
- Case definition: What symptoms best characterize the disease? What symptoms are mandatory to diagnose ME/CFS? How can we make diagnosis as easy as possible for the clinician?
- Methodologies for validating a ME/CFS diagnosis.
- A new method to determine the number of individuals within a given population who suffer from the disease.
- A sampling of current, ongoing ME/CFS laboratory research: microbiome, the role of neuroinflammation and cytokines, using a bio-bank to study tissue abnormalities.
- Clinical research
- Challenges of providing healthcare to the ME/CFS population
- Special needs of pediatric and adolescent patients
Last year’s winner received more than 80 citations, 70,000 views and 9,000 downloads, and one of the papers was featured in The Washington Post. The 2017 winner brought together 630 authors, publishing 149 papers and receiving more than 1.2 million views and downloads. So far, the ME/CFS topic has nearly 140,000 views.
We know that Dr. Anthony Komaroff’s recent paper on ME/CFS in the Journal of the American Medical Association was one of the top five in JAMA in July, so there is great interest right now in ME/CFS. Let’s help publicize these papers and generate even more interest!
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