Visual Map of Disease Could Reveal Hidden Links

By analyzing the health records of 1.5 million people, Columbia University researchers have assembled a visual map that could illuminate unexpected relationships between diseases.

Using health records from the Columbia University Medical Center, Rzhetsky's group examined the likelihood that a patient with one genetically complex disease--for example, diabetes--also had one of the 160 other diseases under study, such as an autoimmune disorder. The researchers concluded that certain groups of genes can predispose a person to multiple diseases, while others can predispose a person to one disease while protecting against another.

The strongest correlations involved neurological disorders, particularly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism.

But while the researchers framed the map in genetic terms -- if people with one disease were especially likely to have another, then the diseases might have similar genetic origins -- it could also suggest environmental triggers:

Though Rzhetsky cautions that the work is preliminary, the results give some support to theories that autoimmune disorders and bacterial or viral infections might put people at risk for autism and diabetes.

That would seem to be the next step in the research: having identified related diseases, cross-reference the connections with dietary habits, chemical exposures and other life experience variables. Such a study would be tricky to run, but the discoveries could be great.

Mapping Complex Diseases [Technology Review]

Probing genetic overlap among complex human phenotypes [PNAS]