Physiological Network From Anthropometric and Blood Test Biomarkers

Abstract

Currently, research in physiology focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying the functioning of living organisms. Reductionist strategies are used to decompose systems into their components and to measure changes of physiological variables between experimental conditions. However, how these isolated physiological variables translate into the emergence -and collapse- of biological functions of the organism as a whole is often a less tractable question. To generate a useful representation of physiology as a system, known and unknown interactions between heterogeneous physiological components must be taken into account. In this work we use a Complex Inference Networks approach to build physiological networks from biomarkers. We employ two unrelated databases to generate Spearman correlation matrices of 81 and 54 physiological variables, respectively, including endocrine, mechanic, biochemical, anthropometric, physiological, and cellular variables. From these correlation matrices we generated physiological networks by selecting a p-value threshold indicating statistically significant links. We compared the networks from both samples to show which features are robust and representative for physiology in health. We found that although network topology is sensitive to the p-value threshold, an optimal value may be defined by combining criteria of stability of topological features and network connectedness. Unsupervised community detection algorithms allowed to obtain functional clusters that correlate well with current medical knowledge. Finally, we describe the topology of the physiological networks, which lie between random and ordered structural features, and may reflect system robustness and adaptability. Modularity of physiological networks allows to explore functional clusters that are consistent even when considering different physiological variables. Altogether Complex Inference Networks from biomarkers provide an efficient implementation of a systems biology approach that is visually understandable and robust. We hypothesize that physiological networks allow to translate concepts such as homeostasis into quantifiable properties of biological systems useful for determination and quantification of health and disease.

Keywords: anthropometric measures; blood test biomarkers; complex inference network; homeostasis; physiological networks.