Structure and dynamics of human disease-complication network

Abstract

A complication is an unanticipated disease arisen following, induced by a disease, a treatment or a procedure. We compile the Human Disease-Complication Network from the medical data and investigate the characteristics of the network. It is observed that the modules of the network are dominated by the classes of diseases. The relations between modules are unveiled in detail. Three nontrivial motifs are identified from the network. We further simulate the dynamics of motifs with the Boolean dynamic model. Each motif represents a specific dynamic behavior, which is potentially functional in the disease system, such as generating temporal progressions and governing the responses to fluctuating external stimuli. Author summaryAdvances in molecular biology lead to a new discipline of network medicine, investigating human diseases in a networked structure perspective. Recently, clinical records have been introduced to the research of complex networks of diseases. An important available medical dataset that has been overlooked so far is the complications of diseases, which are vital for human beings. We compile the Human Disease-Complication Network, representing the causality between the upstream diseases and their downstream complications. This work not only helps us to comprehend why certain groups of diseases appear collectively, but also provides a new paradigm to investigate the dynamics of disease progression. For clinical applications, the investigation of complications may yield new approaches to disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment.