Bioinformatics and Multi-omics Approach to Identify Comorbidities with Application in Schizophrenia with Psychiatric Disorders

Abstract

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a major psychiatric disorder and often presents with psychiatric comorbidities. But, the interactions or links between the pathogenesis of SCZ and comorbidities are not known. In this study, we aimed to develop an integrated multi-omics approach based on gene expression, gene ontology, pathways, protein-protein interactions data that help clinical researchers to assess the links between SCZ and major psychiatric pathologies. We compared the transcriptomic alterations between diseases and controls and observed significant perturbed gene expression patterns i.e. differentially expressed (DEGs) shared among SCZ and major depressive disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, alcoholism, eating disorder. We observed deregulated expression of three DEGs, namely, HAPLN1, CNDP1, SLC12A2 in SCZ and pathologies, which were common among the selected pathologies suggesting the selected disorders are comorbidities of SCZ. The pathways including FoxO signaling pathway, MAPK signaling pathway, transcriptional misregulation in cancer, cellular senescence, cell cycle, PI3-Akt signaling pathway, TNF signaling pathway, and TGF-beta signaling pathway altered by the shared SCZ and psychiatric comorbidities also identified. The present study revealed biomolecules (DEGs), ontologies, and cellular pathways of the etiopathogenetic mechanisms of SCZ and psychiatric comorbidities.