Genetic and functional characterization of disease associations explains comorbidity.

ABSTRACT: Understanding relationships between diseases, such as comorbidities, has important socio-economic implications, ranging from clinical study design to health care planning. Most studies characterize disease comorbidity using shared genetic origins, ignoring pathway-based commonalities between diseases. In this study, we define the disease pathways using an interactome-based extension of known disease-genes and introduce several measures of functional overlap. The analysis reveals 206 significant links among 94 diseases, giving rise to a highly clustered disease association network. We observe that around 95% of the links in the disease network, though not identified by genetic overlap, are discovered by functional overlap. This disease network portraits rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, atheros

SUBMITTER: Rubio-Perez C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5524755 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature