A Pathway-Based View of Human Diseases and Disease Relationships
2009

Understanding Relationships Between Human Diseases

Sample size: 1028 publication Evidence: high

Author Information

Author(s): Li Yong, Agarwal Pankaj

Primary Institution: GlaxoSmithKline R&D

Hypothesis

How are different human diseases related based on their underlying biology?

Conclusion

The study identified numerous disease relationships based on shared biological pathways, suggesting new insights into disease classification and treatment.

Supporting Evidence

  • 4,195 candidate disease associated genes were identified for 1,028 diseases.
  • On average, about 50% of disease associated genes of a disease are statistically mapped to pathways.
  • A disease network was generated consisting of 591 diseases and 6,931 disease relationships.

Takeaway

This study shows that many diseases are connected because they share similar biological pathways, which can help us understand and treat them better.

Methodology

The study used literature mining to identify disease-associated genes and mapped them to biological pathways to create a disease network.

Statistical Information

P-Value

<0.001

Statistical Significance

p<0.001

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1371/journal.pone.0004346

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