Identification of new biomarker candidates for glucocorticoid induced insulin resistance using literature mining

• Main Authors: Fleuren Wilco WM, Toonen Erik JM, Verhoeven Stefan, Frijters Raoul, Hulsen Tim, Rullmann Ton, van Schaik René, de Vlieg Jacob, Alkema Wynand
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2013-02-01
• Series: BioData Mining
• Subjects: Literature mining; Insulin resistance; Glucocorticoids; Gene networks
• Online Access: http://www.biodatamining.org/content/6/1/2

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Glucocorticoids are potent anti-inflammatory agents used for the treatment of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. Unfortunately, usage is limited because of metabolic side-effects, e.g. insulin resistance, glucose intolerance and diabetes. To gain more insight into the mechanisms behind glucocorticoid induced insulin resistance, it is important to understand which genes play a role in the development of insulin resistance and which genes are affected by glucocorticoids.</p> <p>Medline abstracts contain many studies about insulin resistance and the molecular effects of glucocorticoids and thus are a good resource to study these effects.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed CoPubGene a method to automatically identify gene-disease associations in Medline abstracts. We used this method to create a literature network of genes related to insulin resistance and to evaluate the importance of the genes in this network for glucocorticoid induced metabolic side effects and anti-inflammatory processes.</p> <p>With this approach we found several genes that already are considered markers of GC induced IR, such as <it>phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase</it> (<it>PCK</it>) and <it>glucose</it>-<it>6</it>-<it>phosphatase</it>, <it>catalytic subunit</it> (<it>G6PC</it>). In addition, we found genes involved in steroid synthesis that have not yet been recognized as mediators of GC induced IR.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>With this approach we are able to construct a robust informative literature network of insulin resistance related genes that gave new insights to better understand the mechanisms behind GC induced IR. The method has been set up in a generic way so it can be applied to a wide variety of disease networks.</p>