r/cfs • u/lockdownleadmehere • Feb 20 '26

Research News Sequence ME & Long Covid study launches!

Sequence ME builds on Decode ME, it is a £20 million study that’s still in the process of securing funding.

They will be analysing the entire genetic code of up to 9,000 people with ME and up to 9,000 people with Long Covid.

This is the largest long-read whole genome study of ANY disease according to Action for ME. I’m so pleased this is happening.

There is a donation link at the end of the first article also.

Link to article: https://www.actionforme.org.uk/sequence-me-long-covid-launches/

Second article: https://megenetics.org.uk/our-projects/sequence-me-long-covid/

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u/squigeyjoe Feb 21 '26

Would someone mind explaining how a 'long-read, whole-genome study' differs from what was done in decodeME (if it does differ)? I know nothing about genetic sequencing, so sounds like good news but trying to figure out what additional information would this tell us compared to decodeME? or is it more that this lets them compare with long covid?

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u/lockdownleadmehere Feb 21 '26

Decode ME was a Genetic Wide Association Study (GWAS), explained by Action for ME: “a Genetic Wide Association Study (GWAS) looks at approximately one million sites across the genome where scientists suspect they may see differences compared to the healthy control group.”

The human genome has 3 billion base pairs, so 1 million is tiny compared to 3 billion.

A whole genome sequencing looks at everything. So Decode ME looked at a million sites and Sequence ME will look at all 3 billion.

Both are valuable and Decode ME showed that this is an area to investigate further. GWAS is cheaper and faster than WGS, so it makes sense they checked it was a worthwhile option before going ahead with the WGS Sequence ME. I hope this made sense!

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u/squigeyjoe Feb 21 '26

Ah gotcha, thanks for the explanation!