Advancing Digital Precision Medicine for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome through Longitudinal Large-Scale Multi-Modal...

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a complex debilitating disorder manifesting as severe fatigue and post-exertional malaise. The etiology of ME/CFS remains elusive. Here in chapter one, we present a deep metagenomic analysis of stool combined with plasma metabolomics and clinical phenotyping of two ME/CFS cohorts with short (<4y, n=75) or long-term disease (>10y, n=79) compared to healthy controls (n=79). First, we describe microbial and metabolomic dysbiosis in ME/CFS patients. Short-term patients showed significant microbial dysbiosis, while long-term patients had largely resolved microbial dysbiosis but had metabolic and clinical aberrations. Second, we identified phenotypic, microbial, and metabolic biomarkers specific to patient cohorts. These revealed potential functional mechanisms underlying disease onset and duration, including reduced microbial butyrate biosynthesis together with a reduction in plasma butyrate, bile acids, and benzoate. In addition to the insights derived, our data represent an important resource to facilitate mechanistic hypotheses of host-microbiome interactions in ME/CFS. We then studied a more generalized question in chapter two: chronic diseases like ME/CFS and long COVID exhibit high heterogeneity with multifactorial etiology and progression, complicating diagnosis and treatment. To address this, we developed BioMapAI, an explainable Deep Learning framework using the richest longitudinal multi- 'omics dataset for ME/CFS to date. This dataset includes gut metagenomics, plasma metabolome, immune profiling, blood labs, and clinical symptoms. By connecting multi- 'omics to a symptom matrix, BioMapAI identified both disease- and symptom-specific biomarkers, reconstructed symptoms, and achieved state-of-the-art precision in disease classification. We also created the first connectivity map of these 'omics in both healthy and disease states and revealed how microbiome-immune-metabolome crosstalk shifted from healthy to ME/CFS. Thus, we proposed several innovative mechanistic hypotheses for ME/CFS: Disrupted microbial functions - SCFA (butyrate), BCAA (amino acid), tryptophan, benzoate - lost connection with plasma lipids and bile acids, and activated inflammatory and mucosal immune cells (MAIT, $\gamma \delta \top$ cells) with INFγ and GzA secretion. These abnormal dynamics are linked to key disease symptoms, including gastrointestinal issues, fatigue, and sleep problems.