The impact of cellular networks on disease comorbidity.
The impact of disease-causing defects is often not limited to the products of a mutated gene but, thanks to interactions between the molecular components, may also affect other cellular functions, resulting in potential comorbidity effects. By combining information on cellular interactions, disease-gene associations, and population-level disease patterns extracted from Medicare data, we find statistically significant correlations between the underlying structure of cellular networks and disease comorbidity patterns in the human population. Our results indicate that such a combination of population-level data and cellular network information could help build novel hypotheses about disease mechanisms.
Department of Physics, Biology, and Computer Science, Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA. perturbation@gmail.com
Juyong
J
Park
Deok-Sun
DS
Lee
Nicholas A
NA
Christakis
Albert-László
AL
Barabási
D015897:Comorbidity; D004194:Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D014481:United States