NetMoST: A network-based machine learning approach for subtyping schizophrenia using polygenic haplotype biomarkersSubtyping neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia remains one of the
most important albeit challenging themes for improving the diagnosis and
treatment efficacy of complex diseases. At the root of the difficulty of this
problem are the polygenicity and genetic heterogeneity of schizophrenia that
render the standard diagnosis based on behavioral and cognitive indicators
notoriously inaccurate. We developed a novel network-based machine-learning
approach, netMoST, to subtyping psychiatric disorders. NetMoST identifies
modules of polygenic haplotype biomarkers (PHBs) from genome-wide genotyping
data as features for disease subtyping. We applied netMoST to subtype a cohort
of schizophrenia subjects (n = 141) into three distinct biotypes with
differentiable genetic and functional characteristics. The PHBs of the first
biotype (28.4% of all patients) were found to have an enrichment of
associations with neuro-immunity, the PHBs of the second biotype (36.9%) were
related to neurodevelopment and decreased cognitive measures, and the PHBs of
the third biotype (34.7%) were found to have associations with the transport of
calcium ions and neurotransmitters. Neuroimaging patterns provided further
support for these findings, with unique regional homogeneity (ReHo) patterns
observed in the brains of each biotype compared with HCs, and statistically
significant differences in ReHo observed between the biotypes. Our findings
demonstrate the ability of netMoST to uncover novel biotypes in complex
diseases such as schizophrenia via the analysis of genotyping data. The results
also demonstrated the power of exploring polygenic allelic patterns that
transcend the conventional GWAS approaches.
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