Prioritizing Disease Diagnosis in Neonatal Cohorts through Multivariate Survival Analysis: A Nonparametric Bayesian Approach.

Understanding the intricate relationships between diseases is critical for both prevention and recovery. However, there is a lack of suitable methodologies for exploring the precedence relationships within multiple censored time-to-event data, resulting in decreased analytical accuracy. This study introduces the Censored Event Precedence Analysis (CEPA), which is a nonparametric Bayesian approach suitable for understanding the precedence relationships in censored multivariate events. CEPA aims to analyze the precedence relationships between events to predict subsequent occurrences effectively. We applied CEPA to neonatal data from the National Health Insurance Service, identifying the precedence relationships among the seven most commonly diagnosed diseases categorized by the International Classification of Diseases. This analysis revealed a typical diagnostic sequence, starting with respiratory diseases, followed by skin, infectious, digestive, ear, eye, and injury-related diseases. Furthermore, simulation studies were conducted to demonstrate CEPA suitability for censored multivariate datasets compared to traditional models. The performance accuracy reached 76% for uniform distribution and 65% for exponential distribution, showing superior performance in all four tested environments. Therefore, the statistical approach based on CEPA enhances our understanding of disease interrelationships beyond competitive methodologies. By identifying disease precedence with CEPA, we can preempt subsequent disease occurrences and propose a healthcare system based on these relationships.

Bitter taste receptor activation by cholesterol and an intracellular tastant.

Bitter taste sensing is mediated by type 2 taste receptors (TAS2Rs (also known as T2Rs)), which represent a distinct class of G-protein-coupled receptors1. Among the 26 members of the TAS2Rs, TAS2R14 is highly expressed in extraoral tissues and mediates the responses to more than 100 structurally diverse tastants2-6, although the molecular mechanisms for recognizing diverse chemicals and initiating cellular signalling are still poorly understood. Here we report two cryo-electron microscopy structures for TAS2R14 complexed with Ggust (also known as gustducin) and Gi1. Both structures have an orthosteric binding pocket occupied by endogenous cholesterol as well as an intracellular allosteric site bound by the bitter tastant cmpd28.1, including a direct interaction with the α5 helix of Ggust and Gi1. Computational and biochemical studies validate both ligand interactions. Our functional analysis identified cholesterol as an orthosteric agonist and the bitter tastant cmpd28.1 as a positive allosteric modulator with direct agonist activity at TAS2R14. Moreover, the orthosteric pocket is connected to the allosteric site via an elongated cavity, which has a hydrophobic core rich in aromatic residues. Our findings provide insights into the ligand recognition of bitter taste receptors and suggest activities of TAS2R14 beyond bitter taste perception via intracellular allosteric tastants.

AlphaFold2 structures template ligand discovery.

AlphaFold2 (AF2) and RosettaFold have greatly expanded the number of structures available for structure-based ligand discovery, even though retrospective studies have cast doubt on their direct usefulness for that goal. Here, we tested unrefined AF2 models prospectively, comparing experimental hit-rates and affinities from large library docking against AF2 models vs the same screens targeting experimental structures of the same receptors. In retrospective docking screens against the σ2 and the 5-HT2A receptors, the AF2 structures struggled to recapitulate ligands that we had previously found docking against the receptors' experimental structures, consistent with published results. Prospective large library docking against the AF2 models, however, yielded similar hit rates for both receptors versus docking against experimentally-derived structures; hundreds of molecules were prioritized and tested against each model and each structure of each receptor. The success of the AF2 models was achieved despite differences in orthosteric pocket residue conformations for both targets versus the experimental structures. Intriguingly, against the 5-HT2A receptor the most potent, subtype-selective agonists were discovered via docking against the AF2 model, not the experimental structure. To understand this from a molecular perspective, a cryoEM structure was determined for one of the more potent and selective ligands to emerge from docking against the AF2 model of the 5-HT2A receptor. Our findings suggest that AF2 models may sample conformations that are relevant for ligand discovery, much extending the domain of applicability of structure-based ligand discovery.

CTIVA: Censored time interval variable analysis.

Traditionally, datasets with multiple censored time-to-events have not been utilized in multivariate analysis because of their high level of complexity. In this paper, we propose the Censored Time Interval Analysis (CTIVA) method to address this issue. It estimates the joint probability distribution of actual event times in the censored dataset by implementing a statistical probability density estimation technique on the dataset. Based on the acquired event time, CTIVA investigates variables correlated with the interval time of events via statistical tests. The proposed method handles both categorical and continuous variables simultaneously-thus, it is suitable for application on real-world censored time-to-event datasets, which include both categorical and continuous variables. CTIVA outperforms traditional censored time-to-event data handling methods by 5% on simulation data. The average area under the curve (AUC) of the proposed method on the simulation dataset exceeds 0.9 under various conditions. Further, CTIVA yields novel results on National Sample Cohort Demo (NSCD) and proteasome inhibitor bortezomib dataset, a real-world censored time-to-event dataset of medical history of beneficiaries provided by the National Health Insurance Sharing Service (NHISS) and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). We believe that the development of CTIVA is a milestone in the investigation of variables correlated with interval time of events in presence of censoring.

Discovering potential pathways between type 2 diabetes mellitus and diabetic retinopathy: A big data analysis of the South Korean National Sample Cohort.

Diabetes mellitus, a prevalent metabolic disorder, is associated with a multitude of complications that necessitate vigilant management post-diagnosis. A notable complication, diabetic retinopathy, could lead to intense ocular injury, including vision impairment and blindness, due to the impact of the disease. Studying the transition from diabetes to diabetic retinopathy is paramount for grasping and halting the progression of complications. In this study, we examine the statistical correlation between type 2 diabetes mellitus and retinal disorders classified elsewhere, ultimately proposing a comprehensive disease network. The National Sample Cohort of South Korea, containing approximately 1 million samples and primary diagnoses based on the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision classification, was utilized for this retrospective analysis. The diagnoses of both conditions displayed a statistically significant correlation with a chi-square test value of P < .001, and the t test for the initial diagnosis date also yielded a P < .001 value. The devised network, comprising 27 diseases and 142 connections, was established through statistical evaluations. This network offers insight into potential pathways leading to diabetic retinopathy and intermediary diseases, encouraging medical researchers to further examine various risk factors associated with these connections.

Deep Learning Approaches for lncRNA-Mediated Mechanisms: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Developments.

This review paper provides an extensive analysis of the rapidly evolving convergence of deep learning and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Considering the recent advancements in deep learning and the increasing recognition of lncRNAs as crucial components in various biological processes, this review aims to offer a comprehensive examination of these intertwined research areas. The remarkable progress in deep learning necessitates thoroughly exploring its latest applications in the study of lncRNAs. Therefore, this review provides insights into the growing significance of incorporating deep learning methodologies to unravel the intricate roles of lncRNAs. By scrutinizing the most recent research spanning from 2021 to 2023, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of how deep learning techniques are employed in investigating lncRNAs, thereby contributing valuable insights to this rapidly evolving field. The review is aimed at researchers and practitioners looking to integrate deep learning advancements into their lncRNA studies.

Standardized Database of 12-Lead Electrocardiograms with a Common Standard for the Promotion of Cardiovascular Research: KURIAS-ECG.

OBJECTIVES: Electrocardiography (ECG)-based diagnosis by experts cannot maintain uniform quality because individual differences may occur. Previous public databases can be used for clinical studies, but there is no common standard that would allow databases to be combined. For this reason, it is difficult to conduct research that derives results by combining databases. Recent commercial ECG machines offer diagnoses similar to those of a physician. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to construct a standardized ECG database using computerized diagnoses. METHODS: The constructed database was standardized using Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) and Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership-common data model (OMOP-CDM), and data were then categorized into 10 groups based on the Minnesota classification. In addition, to extract high-quality waveforms, poor-quality ECGs were removed, and database bias was minimized by extracting at least 2,000 cases for each group. To check database quality, the difference in baseline displacement according to whether poor ECGs were removed was analyzed, and the usefulness of the database was verified with seven classification models using waveforms. RESULTS: The standardized KURIAS-ECG database consists of high-quality ECGs from 13,862 patients, with about 20,000 data points, making it possible to obtain more than 2,000 for each Minnesota classification. An artificial intelligence classification model using the data extracted through SNOMED-CT showed an average accuracy of 88.03%. CONCLUSIONS: The KURIAS-ECG database contains standardized ECG data extracted from various machines. The proposed protocol should promote cardiovascular disease research using big data and artificial intelligence.

Predicting medical specialty from text based on a domain-specific pre-trained BERT.

BACKGROUND: Owing to the prevalence of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), coping with clinical issues at the individual level has become important to the healthcare system. Accordingly, precise initiation of treatment after a hospital visit is required for expedited processes and effective diagnoses of outpatients. To achieve this, artificial intelligence in medical natural language processing (NLP), such as a healthcare chatbot or a clinical decision support system, can be suitable tools for an advanced clinical system. Furthermore, support for decisions on the medical specialty from the initial visit can be helpful. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we propose a medical specialty prediction model from patient-side medical question text based on pre-trained bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT). The dataset comprised pairs of medical question texts and labeled specialties scraped from a website for the medical question-and-answer service. The model was fine-tuned for predicting the required medical specialty labels among 27 labels from medical question texts. To demonstrate the feasibility, we conducted experiments on a real-world dataset and elaborately evaluated the predictive performance compared with four deep learning NLP models through cross-validation and test set evaluation. RESULTS: The proposed model showed improved performance compared with competitive models in terms of overall specialties. In addition, we demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed model by performing case studies for visualization applications. CONCLUSION: The proposed model can benefit hospital patient management and reasonable recommendations for specialties for patients.

Functional selectivity of insulin receptor revealed by aptamer-trapped receptor structures.

Activation of insulin receptor (IR) initiates a cascade of conformational changes and autophosphorylation events. Herein, we determined three structures of IR trapped by aptamers using cryo-electron microscopy. The A62 agonist aptamer selectively activates metabolic signaling. In the absence of insulin, the two A62 aptamer agonists of IR adopt an insulin-accessible arrowhead conformation by mimicking site-1/site-2' insulin coordination. Insulin binding at one site triggers conformational changes in one protomer, but this movement is blocked in the other protomer by A62 at the opposite site. A62 binding captures two unique conformations of IR with a similar stalk arrangement, which underlie Tyr1150 mono-phosphorylation (m-pY1150) and selective activation for metabolic signaling. The A43 aptamer, a positive allosteric modulator, binds at the opposite side of the insulin-binding module, and stabilizes the single insulin-bound IR structure that brings two FnIII-3 regions into closer proximity for full activation. Our results suggest that spatial proximity of the two FnIII-3 ends is important for m-pY1150, but multi-phosphorylation of IR requires additional conformational rearrangement of intracellular domains mediated by coordination between extracellular and transmembrane domains.

Conversion of Automated 12-Lead Electrocardiogram Interpretations to OMOP CDM Vocabulary.

BACKGROUND: A computerized 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) can automatically generate diagnostic statements, which are helpful for clinical purposes. Standardization is required for big data analysis when using ECG data generated by different interpretation algorithms. The common data model (CDM) is a standard schema designed to overcome heterogeneity between medical data. Diagnostic statements usually contain multiple CDM concepts and also include non-essential noise information, which should be removed during CDM conversion. Existing CDM conversion tools have several limitations, such as the requirement for manual validation, inability to extract multiple CDM concepts, and inadequate noise removal. OBJECTIVES: We aim to develop a fully automated text data conversion algorithm that overcomes limitations of existing tools and manual conversion. METHODS: We used interpretations printed by 12-lead resting ECG tests from three different vendors: GE Medical Systems, Philips Medical Systems, and Nihon Kohden. For automatic mapping, we first constructed an ontology-lexicon of ECG interpretations. After clinical coding, an optimized tool for converting ECG interpretation to CDM terminology is developed using term-based text processing. RESULTS: Using the ontology-lexicon, the cosine similarity-based algorithm and rule-based hierarchical algorithm showed comparable conversion accuracy (97.8 and 99.6%, respectively), while an integrated algorithm based on a heuristic approach, ECG2CDM, demonstrated superior performance (99.9%) for datasets from three major vendors. CONCLUSION: We developed a user-friendly software that runs the ECG2CDM algorithm that is easy to use even if the user is not familiar with CDM or medical terminology. We propose that automated algorithms can be helpful for further big data analysis with an integrated and standardized ECG dataset.

A pre-trained BERT for Korean medical natural language processing.

With advances in deep learning and natural language processing (NLP), the analysis of medical texts is becoming increasingly important. Nonetheless, despite the importance of processing medical texts, no research on Korean medical-specific language models has been conducted. The Korean medical text is highly difficult to analyze because of the agglutinative characteristics of the language, as well as the complex terminologies in the medical domain. To solve this problem, we collected a Korean medical corpus and used it to train the language models. In this paper, we present a Korean medical language model based on deep learning NLP. The model was trained using the pre-training framework of BERT for the medical context based on a state-of-the-art Korean language model. The pre-trained model showed increased accuracies of 0.147 and 0.148 for the masked language model with next sentence prediction. In the intrinsic evaluation, the next sentence prediction accuracy improved by 0.258, which is a remarkable enhancement. In addition, the extrinsic evaluation of Korean medical semantic textual similarity data showed a 0.046 increase in the Pearson correlation, and the evaluation for the Korean medical named entity recognition showed a 0.053 increase in the F1-score.

Structure of the class C orphan GPCR GPR158 in complex with RGS7-Gß5.

GPR158, a class C orphan GPCR, functions in cognition, stress-induced mood control, and synaptic development. Among class C GPCRs, GPR158 is unique as it lacks a Venus flytrap-fold ligand-binding domain and terminates Gαi/o protein signaling through the RGS7-Gß5 heterodimer. Here, we report the cryo-EM structures of GPR158 alone and in complex with one or two RGS7-Gß5 heterodimers. GPR158 dimerizes through Per-Arnt-Sim-fold extracellular and transmembrane (TM) domains connected by an epidermal growth factor-like linker. The TM domain (TMD) reflects both inactive and active states of other class C GPCRs: a compact intracellular TMD, conformations of the two intracellular loops (ICLs) and the TMD interface formed by TM4/5. The ICL2, ICL3, TM3, and first helix of the cytoplasmic coiled-coil provide a platform for the DHEX domain of one RGS7 and the second helix recruits another RGS7. The unique features of the RGS7-binding site underlie the selectivity of GPR158 for RGS7.

A Word Pair Dataset for Semantic Similarity and Relatedness in Korean Medical Vocabulary: Reference Development and Validation.

BACKGROUND: The fact that medical terms require special expertise and are becoming increasingly complex makes it difficult to employ natural language processing techniques in medical informatics. Several human-validated reference standards for medical terms have been developed to evaluate word embedding models using the semantic similarity and relatedness of medical word pairs. However, there are very few reference standards in non-English languages. In addition, because the existing reference standards were developed a long time ago, there is a need to develop an updated standard to represent recent findings in medical sciences. OBJECTIVE: We propose a new Korean word pair reference set to verify embedding models. METHODS: From January 2010 to December 2020, 518 medical textbooks, 72,844 health information news, and 15,698 medical research articles were collected, and the top 10,000 medical terms were selected to develop medical word pairs. Attending physicians (n=16) participated in the verification of the developed set with 607 word pairs. RESULTS: The proportion of word pairs answered by all participants was 90.8% (551/607) for the similarity task and 86.5% (525/605) for the relatedness task. The similarity and relatedness of the word pair showed a high correlation (ρ=0.70, P<.001). The intraclass correlation coefficients to assess the interrater agreements of the word pair sets were 0.47 on the similarity task and 0.53 on the relatedness task. The final reference standard was 604 word pairs for the similarity task and 599 word pairs for relatedness, excluding word pairs with answers corresponding to outliers and word pairs that were answered by less than 50% of all the respondents. When FastText models were applied to the final reference standard word pair sets, the embedding models learning medical documents had a higher correlation between the calculated cosine similarity scores compared to human-judged similarity and relatedness scores (namu, ρ=0.12 vs with medical text for the similarity task, ρ=0.47; namu, ρ=0.02 vs with medical text for the relatedness task, ρ=0.30). CONCLUSIONS: Korean medical word pair reference standard sets for semantic similarity and relatedness were developed based on medical documents from the past 10 years. It is expected that our word pair reference sets will be actively utilized in the development of medical and multilingual natural language processing technology in the future.

Validation of deep learning natural language processing algorithm for keyword extraction from pathology reports in electronic health records.

Pathology reports contain the essential data for both clinical and research purposes. However, the extraction of meaningful, qualitative data from the original document is difficult due to the narrative and complex nature of such reports. Keyword extraction for pathology reports is necessary to summarize the informative text and reduce intensive time consumption. In this study, we employed a deep learning model for the natural language process to extract keywords from pathology reports and presented the supervised keyword extraction algorithm. We considered three types of pathological keywords, namely specimen, procedure, and pathology types. We compared the performance of the present algorithm with the conventional keyword extraction methods on the 3115 pathology reports that were manually labeled by professional pathologists. Additionally, we applied the present algorithm to 36,014 unlabeled pathology reports and analysed the extracted keywords with biomedical vocabulary sets. The results demonstrated the suitability of our model for practical application in extracting important data from pathology reports.

Network estimation for censored time-to-event data for multiple events based on multivariate survival analysis.

In general survival analysis, multiple studies have considered a single failure time corresponding to the time to the event of interest or to the occurrence of multiple events under the assumption that each event is independent. However, in real-world events, one event may impact others. Essentially, the potential structure of the occurrence of multiple events can be observed in several survival datasets. The interrelations between the times to the occurrences of events are immensely challenging to analyze because of the presence of censoring. Censoring commonly arises in longitudinal studies in which some events are often not observed for some of the subjects within the duration of research. Although this problem presents the obstacle of distortion caused by censoring, the advanced multivariate survival analysis methods that handle multiple events with censoring make it possible to measure a bivariate probability density function for a pair of events. Considering this improvement, this paper proposes a method called censored network estimation to discover partially correlated relationships and construct the corresponding network composed of edges representing non-zero partial correlations on multiple censored events. To demonstrate its superior performance compared to conventional methods, the selecting power for the partially correlated events was evaluated in two types of networks with iterative simulation experiments. Additionally, the correlation structure was investigated on the electronic health records dataset of the times to the first diagnosis for newborn babies in South Korea. The results show significantly improved performance as compared to edge measurement with competitive methods and reliability in terms of the interrelations of real-life diseases.

Structural Basis for Activation of the Heterodimeric GABAB Receptor.

The neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) activates the metabotropic GABAB receptor to generate slow, prolonged inhibitory signals that regulate the neural circuitry. The GABAB receptor is an obligate heterodimeric G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) comprised of GBR1 and GBR2 subunits, each with extracellular, seven-helix transmembrane (7TM), and coiled-coil domains. To understand how GABA-driven conformational changes in the extracellular domain are transmitted to the 7TM domain during signal transduction, we determined cryo-electron microscopy (EM) structures of GABAB in two different states: an antagonist-bound inactive state, and an active state in which both the GABA agonist and a positive allosteric modulator (PAM) are bound. In the inactive state, the TM3 and TM5 helices in the two 7TM domains engage in cholesterol-mediated as well as direct interactions, resulting in an open conformation. GABA binding forces the extracellular domains of GBR1 and GBR2 into a compact form, relocating the linkers that connect the extracellular and 7TM domains closer to each other. The movement of the linker along with the associated extracellular loop 2 of the 7TM domain reorients the two 7TM domains and creates a new interface with the TM5, TM6 and TM7 helices in a closed conformation. PAM binding to the interface between the TM6 and TM6 helices stabilizes the active 7TM domain conformation. The relayed structural rearrangement results in significant conformational changes in the TM helices, as well as intracellular loop 3 in GBR2, which may promote the binding and activation of the Gi/o proteins.

GAIT: Gene expression Analysis for Interval Time.

Motivation: Despite the potential usefulness, the association analysis of gene expression with interval times of two events has been hampered because the occurrence of events can be censored and the conventional survival analysis is not suitable to handle two censored events. However, the recent advances of multivariate survival analysis considering multiple censored events together provide an unprecedented chance for this problem. Based on such advances, we have developed a software tool, GAIT, for the association analysis of gene expression with interval time of two events. Results: The performance of GAIT was demonstrated by simulation studies and the real data analysis. The result indicates the usefulness of GAIT in a wide range of biomedical applications. Availability and implementation: http://cdal.korea.ac.kr/GAIT/index.html. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.