User Guide

Search Bar

The mapMECFS Search Bar function is designed to recognize user-specified terms describing multiple aspects of a Dataset. This flexibility allows users to enter keywords that identify:

• Experiments involving of a specific sample type (e.g., blood or PBMCs)
• Results of a particular experimental class (e.g., microbiome, metabolomics, or RNAseq)
• Studies with participants that share a specific ME/CFS case definition (e.g., Fukuda)
• Data files containing specific common analytes (e.g., glucose, IL17, or EBI2)

Note regarding synonymous terms: Because different labs apply different conventions for annotating data, it is necessary to account for synonymous terminology describing common data features. For each dataset uploaded to mapMECFS, all features (including synonymous terms) of recognized data types are automatically tagged upon upload.

More information on tagging can be found in the Process Data section of the User Guide.

Results File Explorer

The Results File Explorer tool enables the search and view of specific molecules compiled across all uploaded datasets. This tool is available under the Explorer tab.

The results contain three separate tables:

• Data Files and Calculated Summary Statistics contains search results only from the mapMECFS-calculated summary statistics.
• Results Files contains search results only from the user-uploaded results files.
• Other Datasets contains search results from other elements of the dataset, including the title, description, and metadata.

Integration Tool

The Integration Tool allows users to effortlessly merge clinical data files within specific cohorts. Users can specify variables of interest across several datasets to create customized, exportable datasets tailored to their specific research questions. Detailed instructions on how to use the Integration Tool can be found within the Integration tab.