• To be eligible, you must be between the ages of 18 and 65 and able to travel to the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA, for a single in-person visit. We are recruiting participants for five specific groups (cohorts):

    • Acute Lyme Disease: Individuals with symptoms for less than four weeks.

    • Chronic Lyme Disease: Individuals with persistent symptoms for more than one year after infection.

    • Long COVID: Individuals with chronic symptoms for more than one year after infection.

    • Suspected Lyme: Individuals with a high clinical suspicion of Lyme disease, even without a positive test.

    • Healthy Controls: Healthy volunteers to provide a crucial baseline for our research.

    The first step is to complete our online screening survey. Our team will carefully review your responses and contact you if you meet the criteria for one of our cohorts.

  • Your comfort and consent are our top priorities. While we encourage participation in all aspects of the study to gather the most complete data, several procedures are entirely optional. You can decline to participate in any of these without affecting your involvement in the rest of the study.

    • Optional Assessments: NASA 10-Minute Lean Test, STAT Earpiece, Capillaroscopy.

    • Optional Samples: Sweat collection, throat swab, vaginal swab, and rectal swab.

    • Optional Data Sharing: Sharing data from the Evie Ring after your visit is also optional.

  • Yes, you are welcome to bring a guest with you to your study visit. We are actively recruiting for our Healthy Control group, so if your guest is interested in participating, they can also complete the eligibility survey. Depending on their history, they may also be eligible for another study cohort.

  • Your visit will last approximately 3.5 to 4.5 hours and will take place at the MIT Center for Clinical and Translational Research (CCTR). During this time, you will undergo a series of non-invasive assessments and provide biological samples. Our team will explain every step of the process. The Study Day page has more information about each test.

  • Our research uses a "leave no stone unturned" approach to understand the deep biological changes that occur in infection-associated chronic illness. Your samples are invaluable to this mission. We use them for a wide range of advanced analyses—known as multi-omics—to create a complete biological portrait of each participant. This includes:

    • Genomics: Studying your genetic makeup to look for factors that might predispose someone to chronic illness.

    • Proteomics: Analyzing thousands of proteins in your blood to find patterns related to inflammation and other body processes.

    • Metabolomics: Measuring small molecules to understand the metabolic state of your cells.

    • Immune Profiling: Using our novel FLIP technology to map the full landscape of your antibody responses to infection.

    • Pathogen Profiling: Using deep metagenomic sequencing to look for the presence of the original infectious trigger or other microbes that may contribute to ongoing symptoms.

    By integrating all this data, we aim to discover the key biological markers that can predict who will recover from an infection and who will develop long-term illness.

  • The optional throat swab is administered by a trained clinical professional to minimize discomfort. The optional vaginal and rectal swabs are self-collected in a private bathroom at the research center to ensure your privacy and comfort. You will be provided with detailed instructions for these collections.

  • The optional sweat collection uses a device called the Macroduct Advanced. A clinical professional will place two small electrodes on your forearm, which use a mild, safe electrical current to encourage your sweat glands to produce sweat for about five minutes. Then, a watch-like collector is placed over the area for 20-30 minutes to absorb the sweat. The process is painless, though some people feel a mild tingling sensation.

  • We are committed to sharing your individual results with you. You will receive reports from your neurocognitive assessments (like WAVi and RightEye) and any other data that is CLIA-waived. These reports can be shared with your healthcare team. Please note these are for informational purposes and not for clinical diagnosis. The extensive research data from our multi-omics profiling will be made available to the broader scientific community as de-identified, anonymized data at the conclusion of the study to help accelerate discoveries.

  • We provide your individual data back to you for your own information and to share with your healthcare providers. Our scientific discoveries, however, come from analyzing cohort-level data. This means we compare the data from entire groups of participants (e.g., comparing the Chronic Lyme cohort to the Healthy Control cohort) to identify the biological patterns and differences that are statistically significant. This is how we discover biomarkers that can distinguish between different health outcomes.

  • The consent form specifies that you can request your genetic data generated during the study. We are running the 30X whole genome sequencing in batches, and you will be informed when your sequencing data is available.

  • Protecting your privacy is a top priority. We use a multi-layered approach to keep your information secure:

    • De-identification: All your data and samples are labeled with a random code, not your name.

    • Secure Storage: The key that links your code to your personal information is stored separately in a locked location or an encrypted electronic system.

    • HIPAA-Compliant Database: All electronic data is managed through a secure, HIPAA-compliant database (REDCap) hosted by MIT.

    • Certificate of Confidentiality: The study is covered by a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which helps protect researchers from being legally compelled to disclose identifiable information.

  • Recruitment for the MAESTRO study is currently ongoing. However, the research will continue long after the initial phase of the study is complete. Your de-identified samples will be stored indefinitely in a biobank at MIT, creating a valuable resource that will allow researchers to answer new questions about chronic illness for years to come.

  • We are committed to sharing our progress with the community. Major study updates, findings, and links to publications will be posted on the Tal Research Group website. We encourage you to check the website for the latest news.

  • If you have any questions about the research, please feel free to contact our team:

Frequently Asked Questions