disgenet2r: An R package to explore the molecular underpinnings of human diseases

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Introduction

The disgenet2r package contains a set of functions to retrieve, visualize and expand DISGENET data (Piñero et al. 2021, 2019). DISGENET is a comprehensive discovery platform that integrates more than 30 millions associations between genes, variants, and human diseases. The information in DISGENET has been extracted from expert-curated resources and from the literature using state-of-the-art text mining technologies (Table 1).

To use DISGENET and the disgenet2r package, you need to acquire a license. Please contact us at for license conditions and pricing.

Table 1: Sources of DISGENET data
Source_Name Type_of_data Description
ALL GDAs/VDAs All data sources
CLINICALTRIALS GDAs Data from Clinicaltrials.org
CLINVAR GDAs/VDAs ClinVar Database
CLINGEN GDAs/VDAs The Clinical Genome Resource
CURATED GDAs/VDAs Human curated sources: ClinGen,ClinVar,GenCC,UniProt,Orphanet,PsyGeNET,MGD,RGD
FINNGEN GDAs/VDAs FinnGen data
GENCC GDAs the Gene Curation Coalition Database
GWASCAT GDAs/VDAs The NHGRI-EBI GWAS Catalog
HPO GDAs Human Phenotype Ontology
INFERRED GDAs Inferred data from the HPO and the GWAS and PHEWAS Catalogs, and from UK and FinnGen biobanks
MGD_HUMAN GDAs Mouse Genome Database, human data
MGD_MOUSE GDAs Mouse Genome Database, mouse data
MODELS GDAs Data from animal models: MGD MOUSE, RGD RAT, and TEXT MINING MODELS
ORPHANET GDAs The portal for rare diseases and orphan drugs
PHEWASCAT GDAs/VDAs The PHEWAS Catalog
PSYGENET GDAs Psychiatric disorders Gene association NETwork
RGD_HUMAN GDAs Rat Genome Database, human data
RGD_RAT GDAs Rat Genome Database, rat data
TEXT MINING HUMAN GDAs/VDAs Data from text mining medline abstracts, human
TEXT MINING MODELS GDAs Data from text mining medline abstracts, animal models
UK BIOBANK GDAs/VDAs UK Biobank GWAS data
UNIPROT GDAs/VDAs The Universal Protein Resource

You can test DISGENET and the disgenet2r package by registering for a free trial account here.

disgenet2r package usage limits

Trial account

Please note that the trial account enables you to test all the functions of the disgenet2r package, but the queries to DISGENET database have the following restrictions:

  • Only the top-30 results ordered by descending DISGENET score are returned (pagination is not supported).

  • Multiple-entity queries support at most 10 entities (genes, diseases, variants).

  • The access to DISGENET with a TRIAL account will expire after 7 days from the day of activation.

Other plans

There are limits in place for the disgenet2r package to ensure smooth performance for all users. These limits apply to academics, advanced, and premium users, mirroring the limits of the DISGENET REST API.

Here’s a breakdown of the limitations:

  • A maximum of 100 pages of results are returned.

  • Multiple-entity queries support at most 100 entities (genes, diseases, variants).

Important Note: The package will display a warning message if you exceed these limits.

Recommendations for Efficient Use:

To improve performance and avoid exceeding limits, consider querying with smaller batches of entities. You can also use disgenet metrics and annotations to refine your search and reduce the number of returned results.

Installation and first run

The package disgenet2r is available through GitLab. The package requires an R version > 3.5.

Install disgenet2r by typing in R:

library(devtools)
install_gitlab("medbio/disgenet2r")

To load the package:

library(disgenet2r)

Once you have completed the registration process, go to your user profile…

… and retrieve your API key

After retrieving the API key from your user profile, run the lines below so the key is available for all the disgenet2r functions.

api_key <- "enter your API key here"
Sys.setenv(DISGENET_API_KEY= api_key)

In the following document, we illustrate how to use the disgenet2r package through a series of examples.

Quick Start

The functions in the disgenet2r package receive as parameters one entity (gene, disease, variant, and chemical), or a list of entities (up to 100) and combinations of them. In addition, they have the following parameters:

  • score A vector with two elements: 1) initial value of score 2) final value of score. Default 0-1.

  • database
    Name of the database that will be queried. Default CURATED. It can take the values: ‘CLINGEN’, ‘GENCC’, ‘CLINVAR’, ‘ORPHANET’, ‘PSYGENET’, ‘UNIPROT’, ‘CURATED’, ‘HPO’, ‘GWASCAT’, ‘PHEWASCAT’, ‘UKBIOBANK’, ‘FINNGEN’, ‘INFERRED’, ‘MGD_HUMAN’, ‘MGD_MOUSE’, ‘RGD_HUMAN’, ‘RGD_RAT’, ‘TEXTMINING_MODELS’, ‘MODELS’, ‘TEXTMINING_HUMAN’, “CLINICALTRIALS” , and ‘ALL’.

  • n_pags
    A number between 1 and 100 indicating the number of pages to retrieve from the results of the query. Default 100. If a number of pages larger than 100 is indicated, the function will stop.

  • verbose By default FALSE. Change it to TRUE to enable real-time logging from the function.

  • order_by
    By default score. Depending on the type of query, it can accept the following values: score, dsi, dpi, pli, pmYear, ei, yearInitial, yearFinal, numCTsupportingAssociation.

Below, an example of a query for the BRCA1 gene in ALL the data. Notice that this query retrieves over 300 pages of results. Only the first 10,000 results will be retrieved (100 pages, 100 results per page).

results <- gene2evidence( gene = "BRCA1", vocabulary = "HGNC", database = "ALL")
## Notice that your query has a maximum of 282 pages.
## By using the default n_pags (100), your query of 282 pages has been reduced to 100 pages.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        BRCA1 
##  . Results:  10000

Retrieving Gene-Disease Associations from DISGENET

Searching by gene

The gene2disease function retrieves the GDAs in DISGENET for a given gene, or a for a list of genes. The gene(s) can be identified by either the NCBI gene identifier, or the official Gene Symbol, and the type of identifier used must be specified using the parameter vocabulary. By default, vocabulary = "HGNC". To switch to Entrez NCBI Gene identifiers, set vocabulary to ENTREZ.

The function also requires the user to specify the source database using the argument database. By default, all the functions in the disgenet2r package use as source database CURATED, which includes GDAs from ClinGen, ClinVar, MGD (Human data), RGD (Human data), Gen CC, PsyGeNET, UniProt, and Orphanet.

The information can be filtered using the DISGENET score. The argument score consists of a range of score to perform the search. The score is entered as a vector which first position is the initial value of score, and the second argument is the final value of score. Both values will always be included. By default, score=c(0,1).

In the example, the query for the Leptin Receptor (Gene Symbol LEPR, and Entrez NCBI Identifier 3953) is performed in the curated data in DISGENET.

results <- gene2disease( gene = 3953, vocabulary = "ENTREZ",
                       database = "CURATED")

The function gene2disease produces an object DataGeNET.DGN that contains the results of the query.

class(results)
## [1] "DataGeNET.DGN"
## attr(,"package")
## [1] "disgenet2r"

Type the name of the object to display its attributes: the input parameters such as whether a single entity, or a list were searched (single or list), the type of entity (gene-disease), the selected database (CURATED), the score range used in the search (0-1), and the gene NCBI identifier (3953).

results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        3953 
##  . Results:  68

To obtain the data frame with the results of the query

tab <- results@qresult
head( tab, 3 )
##   gene_symbol geneid       ensemblid   geneNcbiType geneDSI geneDPI    genepLI
## 1        LEPR   3953 ENSG00000116678 protein-coding    0.41   0.913 8.8607e-05
## 2        LEPR   3953 ENSG00000116678 protein-coding    0.41   0.913 8.8607e-05
## 3        LEPR   3953 ENSG00000116678 protein-coding    0.41   0.913 8.8607e-05
##   uniprotids protein_classid protein_class_name
## 1     P48357    DTO_05007599          Signaling
## 2     P48357    DTO_05007599          Signaling
## 3     P48357    DTO_05007599          Signaling
##                               disease_name diseaseType diseaseUMLSCUI
## 1                                  Obesity   [disease]       C0028754
## 2 Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent   [disease]       C0011860
## 3                        Diabetes Mellitus   [disease]       C0011849
##                                                                            diseaseClasses_MSH
## 1 Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms (C23), Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases (C18)
## 2                   Endocrine System Diseases (C19), Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases (C18)
## 3                   Endocrine System Diseases (C19), Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases (C18)
##       diseaseClasses_UMLS_ST
## 1 Disease or Syndrome (T047)
## 2 Disease or Syndrome (T047)
## 3 Disease or Syndrome (T047)
##                                        diseaseClasses_DO
## 1                        disease of metabolism (0014667)
## 2 disease of metabolism (0014667), genetic disease (630)
## 3 disease of metabolism (0014667), genetic disease (630)
##                                                                           diseaseClasses_HPO
## 1                                                                 Growth abnormality (01507)
## 2 Abnormality of the endocrine system (00818), Abnormality of metabolism/homeostasis (01939)
## 3 Abnormality of the endocrine system (00818), Abnormality of metabolism/homeostasis (01939)
##   disease_prevalence_class disease_prevalence_geo_area disease_prevalence_type
## 1                                                                             
## 2                                                                             
## 3                                                                             
##   disease_inheritance numCTsupportingAssociation numPMIDs
## 1                                             17       14
## 2                                              2        5
## 3                                              3        1
##   chemsIncludedInEvidenceBySource numChemsIncludedInEvidences
## 1                            NULL                          NA
## 2                            NULL                          NA
## 3                            NULL                          NA
##   numPMIDSWithChemsIncludedInEvidences numberChemsFiltered
## 1                                   NA                  NA
## 2                                   NA                  NA
## 3                                   NA                  NA
##   numberPmidsWithChemsFiltered score yearInitial yearFinal evidence_index
## 1                           NA   1.0        1986      2023      0.8847458
## 2                           NA   1.0        2010      2024      0.9252874
## 3                           NA   0.9        2003      2003      0.8800000
##   evidence_level diseaseid
## 1           <NA>  C0028754
## 2           <NA>  C0011860
## 3           <NA>  C0011849

The same query can be performed using the Gene Symbol (LEPR) and the data source (TEXTMINING_HUMAN). Notice how the number of diseases associated to the Leptin Receptor has increased.

results <- gene2disease( gene = "LEPR",
                        vocabulary = "HGNC",
                       database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        LEPR 
##  . Results:  453

The same query can be performed using the ENSEMBL gene identifier of the LEPR gene (ENSG00000116678) by setting the vocabulary to ENSEMBL.

results <- gene2disease( gene = "ENSG00000116678",
                        vocabulary = "ENSEMBL",
                       database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        ENSG00000116678 
##  . Results:  453

Additionally, a minimum threshold for the score can be defined. In the example, a cutoff of score=c(0.3,1) is used. Notice how the number of diseases associated to the Leptin Receptor drops when the score is restricted.

results <- gene2disease( gene = "LEPR",
                        vocabulary = "HGNC",
                       database = "ALL",
                       score =c(0.3,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0.3-1 
##  . Term:        LEPR 
##  . Results:  99

In Table 2 are shown the top 10 diseases associated to the LEPR gene

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("gene_symbol", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top diseases associated to LEPR" ) 
Table 2: Top diseases associated to LEPR
gene_symbol disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
LEPR Obesity 1.00 1966 2025
LEPR Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent 1.00 1966 2025
LEPR Diabetes Mellitus 0.90 1995 2025
LEPR Hypertensive disease 0.85 1999 2023
LEPR Hyperphagia 0.85 1986 2023
LEPR Morbid obesity 0.85 1994 2022
LEPR Hyperinsulinism 0.85 1986 2023
LEPR Insulin Resistance 0.80 1997 2024
LEPR Hyperglycemia 0.80 1986 2024
LEPR Overweight 0.80 2001 2025

Visualizing the diseases associated to a single gene

The disgenet2r package offers two options to visualize the results of querying a single gene in DISGENET: a network showing the diseases associated to the gene of interest (Gene-Disease Network), and a network showing the MeSH Disease Classes of the diseases associated to the gene (Gene-Disease Class Network). These graphics can be obtained by changing the class argument in the plot function.

By default, the plot function produces a Gene-Disease Network on a DataGeNET.DGN object (Figure 1). In the Gene-Disease Network the blue nodes are diseases, the pink nodes are genes, and the width of the edges is proportional to the score of the association. The prop parameter allows to adjust the size of the nodes, while the eprop parameter adjusts the width of the edges while keeping the proportionality to the score.

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      prop = 20, eprop =5, verbose = T)
The **Gene-Disease Network** for the Leptin Receptor gene

Figure 1: The Gene-Disease Network for the Leptin Receptor gene

Use interactive = TRUE to display an interactive plot (Figure 2).

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
       interactive = TRUE)

Figure 2: The interactive Gene-Disease Network for the Leptin Receptor gene

The results can also be visualized in a network in which diseases are grouped by the MeSH Disease Class if the class argument is set to DiseaseClass (Gene-Disease Class Network, Figure 3). In the Gene-Disease Class Network, the node size of is proportional to the fraction of diseases in the disease class, with respect to the total number of diseases with disease classes associated to the gene. In the example, the Leptin Receptor is associated mainly to Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases. There diseases that do not have annotations to MeSH disease class will be shown as a warning.

plot( results,
      class = "DiseaseClass",
       interactive=T, verbose = T)

Figure 3: The Disease Class Network for the Leptin Receptor Gene

Exploring the attributes of a gene

The gene2attribute function allows to retrieve the information for a specific gene, or list of genes.

results <- gene2attribute( gene  = "3953", vocabulary = "ENTREZ"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        3953

The result shows the the Disease Specificity Index (DSI), and the Disease Pleiotropy Index (DPI) for the gene (Table 3).

tab <-results@qresult
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Gene attributes for LEPR") 
Table 3: Gene attributes for LEPR
description geneid gene_symbol ensembl_ids uniprotids proteinClasses ncbi_type geneDSI geneDPI genepLI
leptin receptor 3953 LEPR ENSG00000116678 P48357 DTO_05007599, DTO , Signaling protein-coding 0.41 0.913 8.86e-05

Exploring the evidences associated to a gene

You can extract the evidences associated to a particular gene using the function gene2evidence. The evidence types in DISGENET are scientific publications (PMIDs), and clinical trials (NCTIDs).

Additionally, you can explore the evidences for a specific gene-disease pair by specifying the disease identifier using the argument disease.

results <- gene2evidence( gene = "LEPR", vocabulary = "HGNC",
                                        disease ="UMLS_C3554225", database = "ALL")

results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        LEPR 
##  . Results:  20

The results are shown in Table 4.

tab <- results@qresult
tab <-  tab %>%
  filter(reference_type == "PMID") %>%
  select(reference, associationType, pmYear, sentence) %>% arrange(desc(pmYear))

tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)

tab %>%  dplyr::mutate(  pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) ) ) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Evidences supporting the association between LEPR & LEPTIN RECEPTOR DEFICIENCY" ) 
Table 4: Evidences supporting the association between LEPR & LEPTIN RECEPTOR DEFICIENCY
pmid associationType Year Sentence
25751111 GeneticVariation 2015 Seven novel deleterious LEPR mutations found in early-onset obesity: a ΔExon6-8 shared by subjects from Reunion Island, France, suggests a founder effect.
25751111 Causal Mutation 2015 Seven novel deleterious LEPR mutations found in early-onset obesity: a ΔExon6-8 shared by subjects from Reunion Island, France, suggests a founder effect.
24319006 Causal Mutation 2014 Novel LEPR mutations in obese Pakistani children identified by PCR-based enrichment and next generation sequencing.
23616257 Causal Mutation 2014 Whole-exome sequencing identifies novel LEPR mutations in individuals with severe early onset obesity.
24611737 CausalMutation 2014 Novel variants in the MC4R and LEPR genes among severely obese children from the Iberian population.
22810975 GeneticVariation 2012 Variants in the LEPR gene are nominally associated with higher BMI and lower 24-h energy expenditure in Pima Indians.
18703626 CausalMutation 2008 Functional characterization of naturally occurring pathogenic mutations in the human leptin receptor.
17229951 Genetic Variation 2007 Clinical and molecular genetic spectrum of congenital deficiency of the leptin receptor.
17229951 CausalMutation 2007 Clinical and molecular genetic spectrum of congenital deficiency of the leptin receptor.
16284652 CausalMutation 2005 Complete rescue of obesity, diabetes, and infertility in db/db mice by neuron-specific LEPR-B transgenes.
12646666 GeneticVariation 2003 Binge eating as a major phenotype of melanocortin 4 receptor gene mutations.
9537324 Genetic Variation 1998 A mutation in the human leptin receptor gene causes obesity and pituitary dysfunction.
9537324 CausalMutation 1998 A mutation in the human leptin receptor gene causes obesity and pituitary dysfunction.
9537324 GeneticVariation 1998 A mutation in the human leptin receptor gene causes obesity and pituitary dysfunction.
9860295 GeneticVariation 1998 Transmission disequilibrium and sequence variants at the leptin receptor gene in extremely obese German children and adolescents.
9144432 GeneticVariation 1997 Amino acid variants in the human leptin receptor: lack of association to juvenile onset obesity.

To visualize the results when there are many evidences, we suggest to use plot the results using the argument Points (Figure 4). It is important to set the parameter limit to 10,000, in order to include all the evidences in the plot.

results <- gene2evidence( gene = "LEPR", vocabulary = "HGNC",
                        database = "ALL", score=c(0.7,1) )
plot(results, type="Points",   interactive=T, limit=10000)

Figure 4: The Evidences plot for the Leptin Receptor gene

Searching multiple genes

The gene2disease function can also receive as input a list of genes, either as Entrez NCBI Gene Identifiers or Gene Symbols. In the example, we show how to create a vector with the Gene Symbols of several genes belonging to the family of voltage-gated potassium channels (Table 5) and then, we apply the function gene2disease.

Table 5: Example of voltage-gated potassium channel family members
Name Description
KCNE1 potassium channel, voltage gated subfamily E regulatory beta subunit 1
KCNE2 potassium channel, voltage gated subfamily E regulatory beta subunit 2
KCNH1 potassium channel, voltage gated eag related subfamily H, member 1
KCNH2 potassium channel, voltage gated eag related subfamily H, member 2
KCNG1 potassium voltage-gated channel modifier subfamily G member 1

Creating the vector with the list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family.

myListOfGenes <- c( "KCNE1", "KCNE2", "KCNH1", "KCNH2", "KCNG1")

The gene2disease function also requires the user to specify the source database using the argument database, and optionally, the DISGENET score can also be applied to filter the results.

results <- gene2disease(
  gene     = myListOfGenes,
 database = "ALL",
 score =c(0.5, 1),
  verbose  = TRUE
)
## Your query has 1 page.
## Warning in gene2disease(gene = myListOfGenes, database = "ALL", score = c(0.5, : 
##  One or more of the genes in the list is not in DISGENET ( 'ALL' ):
##    - KCNG1
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0.5-1 
##  . Term:       KCNE1 ... KCNH2 
##  . Results:  46

In Table 6, the top 10 diseases associated to the list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family.

tab <- results@qresult[  ,c("gene_symbol", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")]  %>% unique()  %>%
  arrange(desc(score), yearInitial)

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top GDAs for the list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family") 
Table 6: Top GDAs for the list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family
gene_symbol disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
KCNH2 Long QT Syndrome 1.0 1970 2025
KCNH2 Cardiac Arrhythmia 1.0 1975 2025
KCNH2 Long Qt Syndrome 2 1.0 1990 2025
KCNE1 Jervell-Lange Nielsen Syndrome 1.0 1993 2025
KCNE1 Long QT Syndrome 1.0 1997 2025
KCNE2 Long QT Syndrome 1.0 1999 2025
KCNH2 Short QT Syndrome 1 1.0 1999 2024
KCNE1 LONG QT SYNDROME 5 0.9 1991 2024
KCNH2 Romano-Ward Syndrome 0.9 1993 2020
KCNH2 Prolonged QT interval 0.9 1995 2025

Visualizing the diseases associated to multiple genes

By default, plotting a DataGeNET.DGN resulting of the query with a list of genes produces a Gene-Disease Network where the blue nodes are diseases, the pink nodes are genes, and the width of the edges is proportional to the score of the association (Figure 5).

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      prop = 10, verbose = T)
The **Gene-Disease Network** for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Figure 5: The Gene-Disease Network for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Set the argument interactive = TRUE to see an interactive network (Figure 6).

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      prop = 10,  interactive=TRUE)

Figure 6: The interactive Gene-Disease Network for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Setting the argument type to Heatmap produces a Gene-Disease Heatmap (Figure 7), where the scale of colors is proportional to the score of the GDA. The argument limit can be used to limit the number of rows to the top scoring GDAs. The argument nchars can be used to limit the length of the name of the disease. By default, the plot shows the 50 highest scoring GDAs.

plot( results,
      type  ="Heatmap",
      limit  = 100, nchars = 50, interactive =T, verbose = T)

Figure 7: The Gene-Disease Heatmap for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

These results can also be visualized as a Gene-Disease Class Heatmap by setting the argument type to Heatmap and class to DiseaseClass (Figure 8). In this case, diseases are grouped by the their MeSH disease classes, and the color scale is proportional to the percentage of diseases in each MeSH disease class. In the example, genes are associated mainly to Cardiovascular Diseases, and to Congenital, Hereditary, and Neonatal Diseases and Abnormalities.

plot( results, type="Heatmap",
      class="DiseaseClass", nchars=60, interactive =T)

Figure 8: The Gene-Disease Class Heatmap for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Alternative, set the arguments type to Network and class to DiseaseClass to generate a Gene-Disease Class Network (Figure 9).

plot( results, type="Network",
      class="DiseaseClass", nchars=60, interactive =T)

Figure 9: The Gene-Disease Class Network for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Exploring the evidences associated to a list of genes

First, create the object gene-evidence using the gene2evidence function.

results <- gene2evidence(gene     = myListOfGenes, 
                       database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN", verbose  = TRUE)
## Your query has 35 pages.

To visualize the results set the argument class=Points (Figure 10).

plot(results, type="Points",   interactive=T, limit=10000)

Figure 10: The Evidences plot for a list of genes belonging to the voltage-gated potassium channel family

Exploring the Clinical trials associated to a list of genes

First, create the object gene-evidence using the gene2evidence function.

results <- gene2evidence(gene     = c("MMP1", "MMP2", "MMP3", "MMP9", "MMP10"), 
                       database = "CLINICALTRIALS", verbose  = TRUE )
## Your query has 17 pages.

To visualize the results set the argument class=Points and the argument reference_type to NCTID (Figure 11).

plot(results, type="Points",  reference_type= "NCTID",  interactive=T, limit=10000)

Figure 11: The Evidences plot for a list of MMPs in clinical trials

Searching by gene and chemical

You can search GDAs by chemicals by specifying a chemical identifier using the chemical filter in the gene2disease function. Table 7 shows the diseases associated to LEPR associated to metformin.

results <- gene2disease( gene = "LEPR", vocabulary = "HGNC",
                       database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN", 
                       chemical = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1431" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-disease 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        LEPR 
##  . Results:  6
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(chemical_name, gene_symbol, disease_name,  score)
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "GDAs for LEPR and metformin") 
Table 7: GDAs for LEPR and metformin
chemical_name gene_symbol disease_name score
Metformin LEPR Hyperinsulinism 0.85
Metformin LEPR Polycystic Ovary Syndrome 0.45
Metformin LEPR Steatohepatitis 0.35
Metformin LEPR Schizophrenia 0.25
Metformin LEPR Pulmonary arterial hypertension 0.10
Metformin LEPR Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension 0.10

Retrieving the chemicals associated to a gene

For GDAs that have a chemical annotation, we can perform a query with a gene, or list of genes, to retrieve the chemicals annotated to this associations.

results <- gene2chemical( gene  = "PDGFRA", 
                        vocabulary = "HGNC",
                          database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" , score = c(0.8,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        gene-chemical 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        PDGFRA 
##  . Results:  17
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab %>% dplyr::filter(reference_type == "PMID") %>%   dplyr::select(disease_name, chemical_name, chemical_effect,sentence,  reference, pmYear)
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(  Disease = disease_name, 
                             Chemical = chemical_name, `Chemical effect` =  chemical_effect,
                             Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(Year))

tab[1:10,] %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid )  )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Selection of chemicals associated to PDGFRA" ) 
Table 8: Selection of chemicals associated to PDGFRA
Disease Chemical Chemical effect Sentence pmid Year
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors 2-deoxy-2-((18)F)fluoro-aldehydo-D-glucose other 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Uptake in PDGFRA-Mutant Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors. 39853981 2025
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Imatinib therapeutic|therapeutic Ripretinib, an oral switch-control inhibitor of KIT tyrosine kinase and platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha kinase, is approved for adults with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor who received prior treatment with three or more kinase inhibitors, including imatinib. 40684393 2025
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Ripretinib therapeutic|therapeutic Ripretinib, an oral switch-control inhibitor of KIT tyrosine kinase and platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha kinase, is approved for adults with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor who received prior treatment with three or more kinase inhibitors, including imatinib. 40684393 2025
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Imatinib therapeutic First-line imatinib therapy can be employed to treat GISTs harboring mutations in the tyrosine-protein kinase KIT (KIT) and platelet-derived growth factor receptor α (PDGFRα) genes to reduce the tumor size to resectable levels and minimize surgical risks. 40276085 2025
Eosinophilia Imatinib toxicity Clonal eosinophilia with exclusive pulmonary involvement driven by PDGFRA rearrangement treated with imatinib: A case report. 40115037 2025
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Avapritinib therapeutic Avapritinib is the only drug for adult patients with PDGFRA exon 18 mutated unresectable or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). 38803186 2024
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Avapritinib therapeutic Avapritinib is the only potent and selective inhibitor approved for the treatment of D842V-mutant gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), the most common primary mutation of the platelet-derived growth factor receptor α (PDGFRA). 38167404 2024
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Imatinib therapeutic|therapeutic The most common driver mutations are KIT and PDGFRA which can be treated with imatinib or avapritinib (for PDGFRA D842V-mutant GIST), respectively. 38756640 2024
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Avapritinib therapeutic|therapeutic The most common driver mutations are KIT and PDGFRA which can be treated with imatinib or avapritinib (for PDGFRA D842V-mutant GIST), respectively. 38756640 2024
Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors Imatinib therapeutic This review focuses on the mechanisms contributing to drug resistance phenotype in GIST, such as primary imatinib-resistant mutants, secondary mutations, non-covalent binding of TKI to its target, tumor heterogeneity, re-activation of pro-survival/proliferation pathways through non-KIT/PDGFRA kinases, and loss of therapeutic targets in wild-type GIST. 39441520 2024

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=10000)

Figure 12: The Gene-Chemical Network for PDGFRA

Searching by disease

The disease2gene function allows to retrieve the genes associated to a disease, or a list of diseases. The function uses as input the disease, or list of diseases of interest (each disease should have the format: IDENT_ID where IDENT is one of UMLS, ICD9CM, ICD10, MESH, OMIM, DO, EFO, NCI, HPO, MONDO, or ORDO), ID is the identifier in the vocabulary, and the database (by default, CURATED). A threshold value for the score can be set, like in the gene2disease function.

In the example, we will use the disease2gene function to retrieve the genes associated to the UMLS CUI C0036341. This function also receives as input the database, in the example, CURATED, and a score range, in the example, from 0.8 to 1.

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "UMLS_C0036341", 
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0036341 
##  . Results:  157

In Table 9, the top 10 genes associated to UMLS CUI C0036341.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("gene_symbol", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%
  arrange(desc(score), yearInitial)
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top 10 genes associated to Schizophrenia") 
Table 9: Top 10 genes associated to Schizophrenia
gene_symbol disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
DRD3 Schizophrenia 1 1999 1999
DRD2 Schizophrenia 1 2000 2011
BDNF Schizophrenia 1 2003 2008
RTN4R Schizophrenia 1 2004 2017
HTR2A Schizophrenia 1 2004 2008
COMT Schizophrenia 1 2005 2010
MTHFR Schizophrenia 1 2006 2009
TNF Schizophrenia 1 2006 2006
ZNF804A Schizophrenia 1 2008 2018
DISC1 Schizophrenia 1 2010 2011

Visualizing the genes associated to a single disease

There are two options to visualize the results from searching a single disease: a Gene-Disease Network showing the genes related to the disease of interest (Figure 13), and a Disease-Protein Class Network with the genes grouped grouped by the the Drug Target Ontology Protein Class (Figure 14).

Figure 13 shows the default Gene-Disease Network for Schizophrenia. As in the case of the gene2disease function, the blue nodes is the disease, the pink nodes are genes, and the width of the edges is proportional to the score of the association.

plot ( results,
       prop = 10, interactive=TRUE)

Figure 13: The Gene-Disease Network for genes associated to Schizophrenia

Alternatively, in the Disease-Protein Class Network, genes are grouped by the the Drug Target Ontology Protein Class (Figure 14). This is a better choice when there is a large number of genes associated to the disease. This plot uses as class argument ProteinClass. The resulting network will show in blue the disease, and in green the Protein Classes of the genes associated to the disease. The node size is proportional to the number of genes in the Protein Class. In the example, the largest proportion of the genes associated to Schizophrenia are G-protein coupled receptors. Notice again that not all genes have annotations to Protein classes.

plot( results,
      class="ProteinClass",
      interactive=TRUE)

Figure 14: The Protein Class-Disease Network for genes associated to Schizophrenia

The same results are obtained when querying DISGENET with the MeSH identifier for Schizophrenia (D012559).

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "MESH_D012559",  
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        MESH_D012559 
##  . Results:  157

The same results are obtained when querying DISGENET with the OMIM identifier for Schizophrenia (181500).

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "OMIM_181500",  
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        OMIM_181500 
##  . Results:  157

The same results are obtained when querying DISGENET with the ICD9-CM identifier for Schizophrenia (295).

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "ICD9CM_295",  
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        ICD9CM_295 
##  . Results:  157

The same results are obtained when querying DISGENET with the NCI identifier for Schizophrenia (C3362).

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "NCI_C3362", 
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        NCI_C3362 
##  . Results:  157

The same results are obtained when querying DISGENET with the DO identifier for Schizophrenia (5419).

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "HPO_HP:0100753", 
                          database = "CURATED",
                         score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        HPO_HP:0100753 
##  . Results:  157

Searching by disease and chemical

You can filter the results to find associations that are mentioned in the context of a chemical, like the example below.

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "UMLS_C0678222", chemical = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL83",
                          database = "ALL" , n_pags = 1 )
## Notice that your query has a maximum of 10 pages.
## By indicating n_pags = 1, your query of 10 pages has been reduced to 1 pages.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-gda 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0678222 
##  . Results:  100
tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("gene_symbol", "disease_name","score", "chemical_name", "chemicalid")] )%>% dplyr::arrange(desc(score))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top GDAs associated to Breast Carcinoma") 
Table 10: Top GDAs associated to Breast Carcinoma
gene_symbol disease_name score chemical_name chemicalid
BRCA2 Breast Carcinoma 1.00 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
ESR1 Breast Carcinoma 1.00 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
TP53 Breast Carcinoma 1.00 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
CHEK2 Breast Carcinoma 1.00 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
PALB2 Breast Carcinoma 1.00 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
BRIP1 Breast Carcinoma 0.95 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
BRCA1 Breast Carcinoma 0.90 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
CAV1 Breast Carcinoma 0.90 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
CDH1 Breast Carcinoma 0.90 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83
EGFR Breast Carcinoma 0.90 Tamoxifen CHEMBL83

Retrieving the chemicals associated to a disease

For GDAs that have a chemical annotation, we can perform a query with a disease, or list of disease, to retrieve the chemicals annotated to this associations.

results <- disease2chemical( disease = "UMLS_C0010674", 
                           database = "TEXTMINING_MODELS" , score = c(0.8,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-chemical 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_MODELS 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0010674 
##  . Results:  64
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab %>% dplyr::filter(reference_type =="PMID") %>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol, chemical_name,chemical_effect ,sentence, reference, pmYear) 
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Gene = gene_symbol, Chemical = chemical_name,
                          `Chemical Effect`=chemical_effect ,   Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)   %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(Year))

tab[1:10,] %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid)    )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Top chemicals associated to Cystic Fibrosis" ) 
Table 11: Top chemicals associated to Cystic Fibrosis
Gene Chemical Chemical Effect Sentence pmid Year
CFTR Elexacaftor therapeutic|therapeutic|therapeutic Triple-combination CFTR modulators, including ivacaftor/tezacaftor/elexacaftor with an additional class 2 corrector, are now the standard of care for most CF patients, transforming the outlook for this disease. 39882833 2025
CFTR Tezacaftor therapeutic|therapeutic|therapeutic Triple-combination CFTR modulators, including ivacaftor/tezacaftor/elexacaftor with an additional class 2 corrector, are now the standard of care for most CF patients, transforming the outlook for this disease. 39882833 2025
CFTR Ivacaftor therapeutic|therapeutic|therapeutic Triple-combination CFTR modulators, including ivacaftor/tezacaftor/elexacaftor with an additional class 2 corrector, are now the standard of care for most CF patients, transforming the outlook for this disease. 39882833 2025
CFTR Ivacaftor therapeutic|other This allosteric inhibitory mechanism readily explains our observations that pig CFTR, which preserves all the amino acid residues involved in Inh-172 binding, exhibits a much-reduced sensitivity to Inh-172 and that the apparent affinity of Inh-172 is altered by the CF drug ivacaftor (i.e., VX-770) which enhances CFTR’s activity through binding to a site also comprising TM8. 39107303 2024
CFTR Isoniazid therapeutic|other This allosteric inhibitory mechanism readily explains our observations that pig CFTR, which preserves all the amino acid residues involved in Inh-172 binding, exhibits a much-reduced sensitivity to Inh-172 and that the apparent affinity of Inh-172 is altered by the CF drug ivacaftor (i.e., VX-770) which enhances CFTR’s activity through binding to a site also comprising TM8. 39107303 2024
CFTR Linaclotide other These data provide further insights into the action of linaclotide and how DRA may compensate for loss of CFTR in regulating luminal pH. Linaclotide may be a useful therapy for CF individuals with impaired bicarbonate secretion. 38869953 2024
CFTR 2,6-DIAMINOPURINE other The ability of DAP to correct various endogenous UGA nonsense mutations in the CFTR gene and to restore its function in mice, in organoids derived from murine or patient cells, and in cells from patients with cystic fibrosis reveals the potential of such readthrough-stimulating molecules in developing a therapeutic approach. 36641622 2023
CFTR Cyclic adenosine monophosphate other Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-threatening genetic disorder, caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane-conductance regulator gene (cftr) that encodes CFTR, a cAMP-activated chloride and bicarbonate channel. 36289287 2022
CFTR LYSOPHOSPHATIDYLCHOLINE other|other|other We have previously demonstrated that airway conditioning with lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) followed by delivery of a HIV-1-based lentiviral (LV) vector functionally corrects the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) defect in the nasal airways of CF mice. 33446042 2021
CFTR LYSOPHOSPHATIDYLCHOLINE other|other|other We have previously demonstrated that airway conditioning with lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) followed by delivery of a HIV-1-based lentiviral (LV) vector functionally corrects the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) defect in the nasal airways of CF mice. 33446042 2021

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 15: The Disease-Chemical Network associated to Cystic Fibrosis

Exploring the attributes of a disease

The disease2attribute function allows to retrieve the information for a specific disease

results <- disease2attribute( disease  = "UMLS_C0036341"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0036341 
##  . Results:  12

The results (Table 12) show the mappings to different disease vocabularies, and the disease type.

tab <- results@qresult  %>% arrange(desc(vocabulary)) %>% unique()
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Disease attributes for Schizophrenia") 
Table 12: Disease attributes for Schizophrenia
vocabulary code disease_name type diseaseClasses_UMLS_ST diseaseClasses_HPO diseaseClasses_DO diseaseClasses_MSH
UMLS C0036341 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
OMIM 181500 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
NCI C3362 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
MSH D012559 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
MONDO 0005090 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
ICD9CM 295.90 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
ICD9CM 295.9 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
ICD9CM 295 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
ICD10 F20 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
ICD10 F20.9 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
HPO HP:0100753 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)
DO 5419 Schizophrenia disease Mental or Behavioral Dysfunction (T048) Abnormality of the nervous system (00707) disease of mental health (150) Mental Disorders (F03)

Retrieving the UMLS CUIs via other vocabularies

It is possible to obtain the CUIs that map to an identifier of interest (example, ICD9CM, MSH, or OMIM) using the the get_umls_from_vocabulary function.

results <- get_umls_from_vocabulary(
            disease  = "MSH_D012559",  vocabulary = "MSH" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        MSH_D012559 
##  . Results:  2

The results are shown in Table 13.

tab <-results@qresult
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Retrieving the UMLS CUI from MeSH", row.names=F) 
Table 13: Retrieving the UMLS CUI from MeSH
VOCABULARIES code disease_name
MSH D012559 Schizophrenia
UMLS C0036341 Schizophrenia

Finding the CUI associated to the name of a disease of interest

It is possible to obtain the CUIS that correspond to a disease(s) of interest using the the get_umls_from_vocabulary function. For that, we should specify the parameter vocabulary = "NAME". Use the the parameter limit to change the number of CUIs that are retrieved.

results <- get_umls_from_vocabulary(
  disease  = "long QT",  vocabulary = "NAME" ,  limit =10)
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        long QT 
##  . Results:  10

The results are shown in Table 14.

tab <-results@qresult
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "List of CUIs that map to long QT", row.names = F) 
Table 14: List of CUIs that map to long QT
VOCABULARIES code disease_name
UMLS C1141890 Familial long QT syndrome (disorder)
UMLS C2678485 Long Qt Syndrome 9
UMLS C1832916 Timothy syndrome
UMLS C1867904 LONG QT SYNDROME 5
UMLS C1859062 LONG QT SYNDROME 3
UMLS C0023976 Long QT Syndrome
UMLS C2732979 Acquired long QT syndrome (disorder)
UMLS C0152154 Prolonged labor
UMLS C1833154 Long Qt Syndrome 4
UMLS C0151878 Prolonged QT interval

Exploring the evidences associated to a disease

To explore the evidences supporting the associations for Schizophrenia use the function disease2evidence.

results <- disease2evidence( disease  = "UMLS_C0036341",
                           type = "GDA",
                          database = "CURATED",
                          score    = c( 0.8,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-evidence 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.8-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0036341 
##  . Results:  424

A selection of evidences is shown in Table 15.

tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab[tab$reference_type == "PMID" & tab$pmYear > 2013 & tab$source =="PSYGENET", ] 
tab <- tab[ order(-tab$pmYear), c("gene_symbol","source", "associationType", "sentence", "reference", "pmYear")][1:5,]
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Gene = gene_symbol,  Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)

tab %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid)    )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Evidences supporting the association for Schizophrenia" )  
Table 15: Evidences supporting the association for Schizophrenia
Gene source associationType Sentence pmid Year
MAGI2 PSYGENET Biomarker One of the rare CNVs found in SZ cohorts is the duplication of Synaptic Scaffolding Molecule (S-SCAM, also called MAGI-2), which encodes a postsynaptic scaffolding protein controlling synaptic AMPA receptor levels, and thus the strength of excitatory synaptic transmission. 25653350 2015
PPARA PSYGENET Biomarker We report significant increases in PPAR?, SREBP1, IL-6 and TNF?, and decreases in PPAR? and C/EPB? and mRNA levels from patients with schizophrenia, with additional BMI interactions, characterizing dysregulation of genes relating to metabolic-inflammation in schizophrenia. 25433960 2015
NOTCH4 PSYGENET Biomarker Our data indicate that NOTCH4 polymorphism can influence clinical symptoms in Slovenian patients with schizophrenia. 25529856 2015
GRIN2A PSYGENET Biomarker GRIN2A (GT)21 may play a significant role in the etiology of schizophrenia among the Chinese Han population of Shaanxi. 25958346 2015
GRM7 PSYGENET Biomarker In summary, our results indicate that the GRM7 SNPs rs13353402 and rs1531939 might be associated with schizophrenia in Chinese Han population. 26254163 2015

Additionally, you can explore the evidences for a specific gene-disease pair by specifying the gene identifier using the argument gene.

results <- disease2evidence( disease  = "UMLS_C0036341",
                           gene = c("DRD2", "DRD3"),
                           type = "GDA",
                          database = "ALL",
                          score    = c( 0.5,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0.5-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0036341 
##  . Results:  721

The more recent papers are shown in the Table 16.

tab <- results@qresult
tab <-  tab %>%
    filter(reference_type == "PMID") %>%
    select(gene_symbol, associationType, reference, sentence, pmYear) %>% arrange(desc(pmYear)) %>% head(10)
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Gene = gene_symbol, Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)
tab %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Evidences supporting the association between C0036341 & DRD2,DRD3" )  
Table 16: Evidences supporting the association between C0036341 & DRD2,DRD3
Gene associationType pmid Sentence Year
DRD2 CausalOrContributing 39730881 Dysfunction of dopamine systems has long been considered a hallmark of schizophrenia, and nearly all current first-line medication treatments block dopamine D2 receptors. 2025
DRD2 GeneticVariation 39993143 In addition, the DRD2 rs1800497 genotype GA showed a reduced risk of schizophrenia in the male subgroup and the late-onset subgroup (>27 years of age). 2025
DRD2 AlteredExpression 40665271 These results suggest that hypermethylation and low expression of the DRD2 gene may be related to SCZ risk. 2025
DRD2 GeneticVariation 40681517 Here, we show that the selective dopamine D2 receptor deletion from parvalbumin interneurons, a mutation that results in schizophrenia-like phenotypes, causes intrinsic metabolic and immune defects in mice, in a similar way to what is described in schizophrenia patients. 2025
DRD2 CausalOrContributing 40056428 While antipsychotics blocking D2 DA receptors can be effective for positive symptoms of schizophrenia, none are approved by regulatory authorities for predominant negative or cognitive symptoms. 2025
DRD3 GeneticVariation 39993143 For DRD3 polymorphisms, the rs7631540 TC genotype was associated with schizophrenia in the female subgroup. 2025
DRD2 CausalOrContributing 37422511 We focus on schizophrenia and the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2), hot flashes and the neurokinin B receptor (TACR3), cigarette smoking and receptors bound by nicotine (CHRNA5, CHRNA3, CHRNB4), and alcohol use and enzymes that help to break down alcohol (ADH1B, ADH1C, ADH7). 2024
DRD2 GeneticVariation 38421437 Our significant polymorphism findings, mainly those in DRD2 (rs1800497, rs1799978, and rs2734841), HTR2C (rs3813929), and HTR2A (rs6311), were largely consistent with earlier findings (predictors of RIS effectiveness in adult schizophrenia patients), confirming their validity for identifying ASD children with a greater likelihood of core symptom improvement compared to noncarriers/wild types. 2024
DRD2 CausalOrContributing 38114631 The Drd2 gene, encoding the dopamine D2 receptor (D2R), was recently indicated as a potential target in the etiology of lowered sociability (i.e., social withdrawal), a symptom of several neuropsychiatric disorders such as Schizophrenia and Major Depression. 2024
DRD2 GeneticVariation 39187246 DRD2 (rs6276) and DRD3 (rs6280, rs963468) polymorphisms can affect amisulpride tolerability since they are associated with the observed adverse reactions, including cardiac dysfunction and endocrine disorders in Chinese patients with schizophrenia. 2024

Searching multiple diseases

The disease2gene function also accepts as input a list of diseases (each disease should have the format: IDENT_ID where IDENT is one of UMLS, ICD9CM, ICD10, MESH, OMIM, DO, EFO, NCI, HPO, MONDO, or ORDO), the database (by default, CURATED), and optionally, a value range for the score. In the example, we have selected a list of 10 diseases. Table 17 shows the UMLS CUIs and the corresponding disease names.

Table 17: Disease list selected for illustrating the disease2gene multiple search
UMLS_CUI Disease_Name
C0036341 Schizophrenia
C0036341 Alzheimer’s Disease
C0030567 Parkinson Disease
C0005586 Bipolar Disorder

Creating the vector with the list of diseases.

diseasesOfInterest <- paste0("UMLS_",c("C0036341", "C0002395", "C0030567","C0005586"))

In the example, we will search in CURATED data, using a score range of 0.8-1.

results <- disease2gene(
  disease = diseasesOfInterest,
  database = "CURATED",
  score =c(0.8,1),
  verbose  = TRUE )
## Your query has 5 pages.

In table 18, the top 10 genes associated to the list of diseases.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("gene_symbol", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%  dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top Genes associated to a list of diseases") 
Table 18: Top Genes associated to a list of diseases
gene_symbol disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
GBA1 Parkinson Disease 1 1987 2021
SNCA Parkinson Disease 1 1989 2021
APP Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1990 2023
PRKN Parkinson Disease 1 1993 2022
PSEN1 Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1993 2022
LRRK2 Parkinson Disease 1 1993 2021
APOE Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1993 2020
MAPT Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1993 2020
PSEN2 Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1993 2020
GRN Alzheimer’s Disease 1 1993 2020

Visualizing the genes associated to multiple diseases

The default plot of the results of querying DISGENET with a list of diseases produces a Gene-Disease Network where the blue nodes are diseases, the pink nodes are genes, and the width of the edges is proportional to the score of the association (Figure 16).

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      prop = 10, interactive=T)

Figure 16: The Gene-Disease Network associated to a list of diseases

To visualize the results as a Gene-Disease Heatmap (Figure 17) change the argument class to “Heatmap”. In this plot, the scale of colors is proportional to the score of the GDA. The argument limit can be used to limit the number of rows to the top scoring GDAs when the results are large. By default, the plot shows the 50 highest scoring GDAs.

plot( results,
      type="Heatmap",
      limit =20,
      cutoff=0.2, interactive=TRUE)
## [1] "Dataframe of 405 rows has been reduced to 20 rows."

Figure 17: The Gene-Disease Heatmap for genes associated to a list of diseases

A third visualization option is a Protein Class-Disease Heatmap (Figure 18), in which genes are grouped by protein class. This plot is obtained by setting the class argument to “ProteinClass”. In this case, the color of the heatmap is proportional to the percentage of genes for each disease in each protein class. This heatmap displays the protein classes associated to each disease.

plot( results,
      class="ProteinClass", type = "Heatmap", interactive=TRUE)

Figure 18: The Protein Class-Disease Heatmap for genes associated to a list of diseases

A Protein Class-Disease Network visualization is also possible (Figure 19).

plot( results,
      class="ProteinClass", type = "Network", interactive=TRUE)

Figure 19: The Protein Class-Disease Network for genes associated to a list of diseases

To explore the evidences supporting the associations, use the function disease2evidence.

results <- disease2evidence( disease  = diseasesOfInterest,
                           type = "GDA",
                           score=c(0.5,1),
                          database = "CURATED" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-evidence 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.5-1 
##  . Term:       UMLS_C0036341 ... UMLS_C0005586 
##  . Results:  3461

To visualize the results use the argument Points (Figure 20).

plot( results,  
      type = "Points", limit=10000 )
The **Evidences plot** for a list of diseases

Figure 20: The Evidences plot for a list of diseases

Searching by disease and chemical

The disease2gene function can also be used to retrieve genes mentioned in the context of a specific disease and chemical (Table 19)

results <- disease2gene( disease  = "UMLS_C0030567",
                          database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN",
                          chemical = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1009")
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-gda 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0030567 
##  . Results:  85
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol, disease_name, chemical_name, score) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(score)) 
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top GDAs associated to Parkinson and levodopa") 
Table 19: Top GDAs associated to Parkinson and levodopa
gene_symbol disease_name chemical_name score
BDNF Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
GBA1 Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
GDNF Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
MAOB Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
MAPT Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
PRKN Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
SNCA Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
TH Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
PINK1 Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1
LRRK2 Parkinson Disease Levodopa 1

To visualize the results use the function plot (Figure 20)

plot( results, interactive= T )

Figure 21: The Gene Disease Chemical Network for a disease and a drug

Retrieving the chemicals associated to a disease

To retrieve the chemicals mentioned in the GDAs involving a specific disease, we can use the disease2chemical function.

results <- disease2chemical( disease  = "UMLS_C0030567",
                          database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" , score = c(0.5,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-chemical 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0.5-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0030567 
##  . Results:  372
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::filter(reference_type == "PMID")  %>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol, chemical_name, chemical_effect, sentence, reference, pmYear)
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Gene = gene_symbol, Chemical = chemical_name,
                    `Chemical Effect` = chemical_effect,   Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)   %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(Year))

tab[1:10,] %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid))) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Top Chemicals associated to Parkinson" ) 
Table 20: Top Chemicals associated to Parkinson
Gene Chemical Chemical Effect Sentence pmid Year
SNCA CALCIUM other Serine-129 phosphorylated α-synuclein drives mitochondrial dysfunction and calcium dysregulation in Parkinson’s disease model. 40230488 2025
SNCA LIXISENATIDE other Neuroprotective effects of lixisenatide against propagation of α-synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease. 40145958 2025
SNCA Dopamine therapeutic Short-Chain Fatty Acid Aggregates Alpha-Synuclein Accumulation and Neuroinflammation via GPR43-NLRP3 Signaling Pathway in a Model Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by the aggregation of α-synuclein (α-syn) and the loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons, with growing evidence suggesting a significant role of gut microbiota and their metabolites in the disease’s pathogenesis. 39904963 2025
SNCA CINPANEMAB other|other Notably, this approach enables the isolation of conformation-specific antibodies against tau fibrils (Alzheimer’s disease) and α-synuclein fibrils (Parkinson’s disease) with combinations of high affinity, high conformational specificity and, in some cases, low off-target binding that rival or exceed those of clinical-stage antibodies specific for tau (zagotenemab) and α-synuclein (cinpanemab). 40301692 2025
SNCA ZAGOTENEMAB other|other Notably, this approach enables the isolation of conformation-specific antibodies against tau fibrils (Alzheimer’s disease) and α-synuclein fibrils (Parkinson’s disease) with combinations of high affinity, high conformational specificity and, in some cases, low off-target binding that rival or exceed those of clinical-stage antibodies specific for tau (zagotenemab) and α-synuclein (cinpanemab). 40301692 2025
SNCA Dopamine therapeutic This review comprehensively summarizes recent advances in biosensors for the early detection of PD, with a particular focus on the detection of two key biomarkers: dopamine (DA) and α-synuclein (α-syn). 40422019 2025
TH Dopamine therapeutic In contrast to the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain, we observed an increase in tyrosine hydroxylase-positive neurons in the Parkinson’s disease olfactory bulb, suggesting a potential role for dopamine in the hyposmia associated with the condition. 40024917 2025
BDNF Levodopa therapeutic Levodopa-synergistic CBT intervention improves Parkinson’s disease with anxiety disorder by regulating the BDNF/PI3K/AKT pathway. 39937424 2025
SNCA Luteolin other|other|other In vitro investigation indicated that Quercetin is the most effective for treating AD and PD due to its considerable inhibition of alpha-synuclein production, whereas Luteolin is the favorable one for preventing both diseases by mitigating effects during Rotenone treatment. 39959708 2025
SNCA Quercetin other|other|other In vitro investigation indicated that Quercetin is the most effective for treating AD and PD due to its considerable inhibition of alpha-synuclein production, whereas Luteolin is the favorable one for preventing both diseases by mitigating effects during Rotenone treatment. 39959708 2025

To visualize the results use the function plot

plot( results )
The **Network plot** for chemicals associated to Parkinson Disease

Figure 22: The Network plot for chemicals associated to Parkinson Disease

Retrieving Variant-Disease Associations from DISGENET

Searching by variant

The variant2disease function receives a variant, or a list of variants as input, identified by the dbSNP identifier. It produces an object DataGeNET.DGN, with Type = "variant-disease".

results <- variant2disease( variant= "rs113488022",
                         database = "CURATED", score = c(0.2,1)) 
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-disease 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.2-1 
##  . Term:        rs113488022 
##  . Results:  13

The results are shown in Table 21.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top diseases associated to variant rs113488022") 
Table 21: Top diseases associated to variant rs113488022
variantid disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
rs113488022 Colorectal Carcinoma 0.7 1993 2024
rs113488022 melanoma 0.7 2002 2021
rs113488022 Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma 0.7 2002 2019
rs113488022 Papillary thyroid carcinoma 0.7 2002 2018
rs113488022 Colon Carcinoma 0.6 2002 2020
rs113488022 RASopathy 0.6 2011 2018
rs113488022 Nephroblastoma 0.6
rs113488022 Multiple Myeloma 0.6
rs113488022 ASTROCYTOMA, LOW-GRADE, SOMATIC 0.4 2002 2018
rs113488022 Nongerminomatous Germ Cell Tumor 0.4 2002 2018

Visualizing the diseases associated to a single variant

The disgenet2r package offers several options to visualize the results of querying DISGENET for a single variant: a Variant-Disease Network (Figure 23) showing the diseases associated to the variant of interest, a Variant-Gene-Disease Network showing the genes, diseases, and variant of interest, and a network showing the MeSH Disease Classes of the diseases associated to the variant (Variant-Disease Class Network, Figure 24). These graphics can be obtained by changing the class argument in the plot function.

By default, the plot function produces a Variant-Disease Network on a DataGeNET.DGN object (Figure 23). In the Variant-Disease Network the blue nodes are diseases, the yellow nodes are variants, the blue nodes are diseases, and the width of the edges is proportional to the score of the association.

plot( results, 
      type = "Network", interactive=T,
      prop  = 10)

Figure 23: The Variant-Disease Network for the variant rs113488022

plot(results, class="DiseaseClass" , interactive=T)

Figure 24: The Variant-Disease Class Network for the variant rs113488022

Exploring the evidences associated to a variant

You can extract the evidences associated to a particular variant using the function variant2evidence. Additionally, you can explore the evidences for a specific variant-disease pair by specifying the argument disease.

results <- variant2evidence( variant = "rs10795668",
                disease ="UMLS_C0009402",
                       database = "ALL",
                       score =c(0,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        rs10795668 
##  . Results:  9

The results are shown in table 22.

results <- results@qresult
results <- results %>% dplyr::filter(reference_type =="PMID") %>% select(associationType, reference, pmYear, sentence) %>% head(10)
results <- results %>% dplyr::rename(Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid=reference) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(Year))
results %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption ="Evidences supporting the association between C0009402 & rs10795668")  
Table 22: Evidences supporting the association between C0009402 & rs10795668
associationType pmid Year Sentence
GeneticVariation 40479638 2025 Our findings validated rs10795668 (LOC10537640), rs4939827 (SMAD7), rs6066825 (PREX1), and rs6983267 (CCAT2) polymorphisms in CRC risk among Brazilians and suggest that lower Asian and African ancestries might influence CRC susceptibility.
GeneticVariation 36653562 2023
GeneticVariation 30194776 2019 In conclusion, some variants associated with CRC risk (rs10505477, rs6983267, rs10795668 and rs11255841) are also involved in the susceptibility to CRA and specific subtypes.
GeneticVariation 24801760 2015 The CRC SNPs accounted for 4.3% of the variation in multiple adenoma risk, with three SNPs (rs6983267, rs10795668, rs3802842) explaining 3.0% of the variation.
GeneticVariation 24968322 2014 . rs4631962 and rs10795668 contribute to CRC risk in the Taiwanese and East Asian populations, and the newly identified rs1338565 was specifically associated with CRC, supporting the ethnic diversity of CRC-susceptibility SNPs.
GeneticVariation 24066093 2013 We genotyped four variants previously associated with CRC: rs10795668, rs16892766, rs3802842 and rs4939827.
GeneticVariation 22363440 2012 We observed an association between the low colorectal cancer risk allele (A) for rs10795668 at 10p14 and increased expression of ATP5C1 (q = 0.024) and between the colorectal cancer high risk allele (C) for rs4444235 at 14q22.2 and increased expression of DLGAP5 (q = 0.041), both in tumor samples.
GeneticVariation 22367214 2012 We used meta-analysis of an efficient empirical-Bayes estimator to detect potential multiplicative interactions between each of the SNPs [rs16892766 at 8q23.3 (EIF3H/UTP23), rs6983267 at 8q24 (MYC), rs10795668 at 10p14 (FLJ3802842), rs3802842 at 11q23 (LOC120376), rs4444235 at 14q22.2 (BMP4), rs4779584 at 15q13 (GREM1), rs9929218 at 16q22.1 (CDH1), rs4939827 at 18q21 (SMAD7), rs10411210 at 19q13.1 (RHPN2), and rs961253 at 20p12.3 (BMP2)] and select major CRC risk factors (sex, body mass index, height, smoking status, aspirin/nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug use, alcohol use, and dietary intake of calcium, folate, red meat, processed meat, vegetables, fruit, and fiber).
GeneticVariation 18372905 2008 In addition to the previously reported 8q24, 15q13 and 18q21 CRC risk loci, we identified two previously unreported associations: rs10795668, located at 10p14 (P = 2.5 x 10(-13) overall; P = 6.9 x 10(-12) replication), and rs16892766, at 8q23.3 (P = 3.3 x 10(-18) overall; P = 9.6 x 10(-17) replication), which tags a plausible causative gene, EIF3H.

The results can be visualized using the plot function with the argument Points. This will show the number of publications per year associated to this variant. It is important to set the parameter limit to 10,000 in order to include all the results in the plot.

results <- variant2evidence( variant = "rs1800629",
                       database = "ALL",
                       score =c(0,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        rs1800629 
##  . Results:  2135
plot( results,  
      type = "Points", limit=10000 )
The **Evidence plot** for the variant rs1800629

Figure 25: The Evidence plot for the variant rs1800629

Exploring the information associated to a variant

The variant2attribute function receives a variant, or a list of variants as input, identified by the dbSNP identifier. It produces an object DataGeNET.DGN with attributes of the variant(s) such as the allelic frequency according to GNOMAD data, the most severe consequence type from the Variant Effect Predictor and the DPI, and DSI.

results <- variant2attribute( variant= "rs113488022")

results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        rs113488022

The results are shown in table 23.

tab <- unique(results@qresult )
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::select(-threeletterID,-source, -var_gene_symbol)
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Attributes for variant rs113488022") 
Table 23: Attributes for variant rs113488022
variantid ref alt polyphen_score sift_score chromosome coord mostSevereConsequences geneid geneEnsemblID gene_symbol dbsnpclass variantDSI variantDPI exome
rs113488022 A C 0.958 0 7 140753336 missense_variant 673 ENSG00000157764 BRAF snv 0.356 0.061
rs113488022 A G 0.958 0 7 140753336 missense_variant 673 ENSG00000157764 BRAF snv 0.356 0.061
rs113488022 A T 0.958 0 7 140753336 missense_variant 673 ENSG00000157764 BRAF snv 0.356 0.061 1.4e-06

Searching multiple variants

The variant2disease function retrieves the information in DISGENET for a list of variants identified by the dbSNP identifier. The function also requires the user to specify the source database using the argument database. By default, variant2disease function uses as source database CURATED.

results <- variant2disease(
         variant  = c("rs121913013", "rs1060500621",
              "rs199472709", "rs72552293",
              "rs74315445", "rs199472795"),
         database = "ALL")
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        variant-disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:       rs121913013 ... rs199472795 
##  . Results:  18

In table 24, the top 10 diseases associated to the list of variants.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] )%>% dplyr::arrange(desc(score), desc(yearFinal))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top diseases associated to the list of variants")  
Table 24: Top diseases associated to the list of variants
variantid disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
rs74315445 LONG QT SYNDROME 5 0.6 1993 2024
rs74315445 Jervell And Lange-Nielsen Syndrome 2 0.6 1993 2024
rs199472795 Romano-Ward Syndrome 0.6 1993 2022
rs199472709 Romano-Ward Syndrome 0.6 1993 2022
rs72552293 Brugada Syndrome 2 0.6 1993 2007
rs74315445 Familial long QT syndrome (disorder) 0.4 1997 2024
rs74315445 Jervell-Lange Nielsen Syndrome 0.4 1993 2024
rs74315445 Long QT Syndrome 0.4 1997 2024
rs74315445 Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia 0.4 1997 2024
rs74315445 Jervell And Lange-Nielsen Syndrome 1 0.4 1993 2024

Visualizing the diseases associated to multiple variants

The results of querying DISGENET with a list of variants can be visualized as a Variant-Disease Network (Figure 26), as a Variant-Gene-Disease Network (Figure 27), as Variant-Disease Heatmap (Figure 28), as Variant-Disease Class Network (Figure 29) and as a Variant-Disease Class Heatmap (Figure 30).

plot( results,
      type = "Network", interactive=T)

Figure 26: The Variant-Disease Network for a list of variants

To obtain the Variant-Gene-Disease Network (Figure 27), change the showGenes argument to “TRUE”.

plot( results,
      type = "Network", 
      showGenes= T,
      interactive=T)

Figure 27: The Variant-Gene-Disease Network for a list of variants

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a list of diseases can be visualized as a Variant-Disease Network by changing the type argument to Heatmap (Figure 28).

plot( results,
      type = "Heatmap",
      prop = 10, interactive = TRUE, nchar=45)

Figure 28: The Variant-Disease Heatmap for a list of variants

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a list of diseases can also be visualized as a Variant-Disease Class Network by changing the class argument to DiseaseClass (Figure 29).

plot( results,
      class = "DiseaseClass", interactive=T)

Figure 29: The Variant-Disease Class Network for a list of variants

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a list of diseases can also be visualized as a Variant-Disease Class Heatmap by changing the type argument to Heatmap (Figure 30).

plot( results,  type = "Heatmap",
      class = "DiseaseClass", interactive=T)

Figure 30: The Variant-Disease Class Heatmap for a list of variants

Searching by disease

The disease2variant function allows to retrieve the variants associated to a disease, or a list of diseases. The function uses as input the disease, or list of diseases of interest (each disease should have the format: IDENT_ID where IDENT is one of UMLS, ICD9CM, ICD10, MESH, OMIM, DO, EFO, NCI, HPO, MONDO, or ORDO) and the database (by default, CURATED). A threshold value for the score can be set, like in the gene2disease function.

results <- disease2variant(disease = c("UMLS_C1832916"),
                       database = "CLINVAR" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-variant 
##  . Database:     CLINVAR 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C1832916 
##  . Results:  176

In Table 25, the variants associated to Timothy syndrome according to ClinVar database.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%  dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = " Variants associated to Timothy syndrome according to ClinVar") 
Table 25: Variants associated to Timothy syndrome according to ClinVar
variantid disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
rs79891110 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1993 2016
rs786205745 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1993 2004
rs549476254 Timothy syndrome 0.6 1993 2019
rs786205753 Timothy syndrome 0.6 1993 2019
rs786205748 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 2020
rs374528680 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 2015
rs80315385 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 2015
rs1057517711 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 2015
rs797044881 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 2015
rs587782933 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1993 1993

The results can be further restricted to keep variants predicted to be deleterious by SIFT and PolyPhen scores, by passing ranges of these scores to the function, using sift and polyphen arguments, like in the example below. Remember that genetic variants with SIFT scores smaller than 0.05 are predicted to be deleterious, while values of PolyPhen greater than 0.908 are classified as Probably Damaging.

results <- disease2variant(disease = c("UMLS_C1832916"),
                       database = "CLINVAR", sift = c(0,0.05), polyphen = c(0.9,1) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-variant 
##  . Database:     CLINVAR 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C1832916 
##  . Results:  94

In Table 26, the deleterious variants associated to Timothy syndrome repored in ClinVar database.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "disease_name","score", "polyphen_score", "sift_score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%  dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Deleterious variants associated to Timothy syndrome according to ClinVar") 
Table 26: Deleterious variants associated to Timothy syndrome according to ClinVar
variantid disease_name score polyphen_score sift_score yearInitial yearFinal
rs79891110 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1.000 0.00 1993 2016
rs786205745 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1.000 0.01 1993 2004
rs549476254 Timothy syndrome 0.6 0.999 0.00 1993 2019
rs786205753 Timothy syndrome 0.6 0.999 0.00 1993 2019
rs786205748 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1.000 0.00 1993 2020
rs80315385 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1.000 0.00 1993 2015
rs1057517711 Timothy syndrome 0.5 0.999 0.00 1993 2015
rs797044881 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1.000 0.00 1993 2015
rs587782933 Timothy syndrome 0.5 1.000 0.00 1993 1993
rs762091177 Timothy syndrome 0.5 0.995 0.00 1993 1993

Visualizing the variants associated to a single disease

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a list of diseases can be visualized as a Variant-Disease Network (Figure 31).

plot( results,     
      type = "Network", interactive=T)

Figure 31: The Variant-Disease Network for a single disease

The Variant-Disease Network can be displayed as a Variant-Disease-Gene Network, by setting the showGenes parameter to TRUE (Figure 32).

plot( results, 
      type = "Network",
      showGenes = T)
The **Variant-Gene-Disease Network** for a single disease

Figure 32: The Variant-Gene-Disease Network for a single disease

Explore the evidences associated to a single disease

To explore the evidences supporting the VDAs for Timothy syndrome, run the disease2evidence function. You can use the argument variant to inspect the evidences for a particular variant and Timothy syndrome.

results <- disease2evidence( disease  = "UMLS_C1832916",
                           type = "VDA",
                          database = "ALL",
                          score    = c( 0.5,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-evidence 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0.5-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C1832916 
##  . Results:  75
results <- results@qresult
results <- results %>% dplyr::filter(reference_type =="PMID") %>%
    select(reference, associationType, pmYear, sentence) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmYear)) %>% head(10)
results <- results %>% dplyr::rename(Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)
results %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption ="Evidences supporting associations") 
Table 27: Evidences supporting associations
pmid associationType Year Sentence
39079396 GeneticVariation 2024 In this study, we generated a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line from a Timothy syndrome infant carrying heterozygous CACNA1C mutation (transcript variant NM_000719.7c.1216G>A: p.G406R).
38826393 GeneticVariation 2024 Furthermore, it has remained underexplored whether individuals harboring canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) have additional symptoms.
38968219 GeneticVariation 2024 Long QT Syndrome type 8 (LQT8) is a cardiac arrhythmic disorder associated with Timothy Syndrome, stemming from mutations in the CACNA1C gene, particularly the G406R mutation.
39580446 GeneticVariation 2024 It remains underexplored whether individuals with the canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) exhibit overlapping symptoms.
38968219 GeneticVariation 2024 Long QT Syndrome type 8 (LQT8) is a cardiac arrhythmic disorder associated with Timothy Syndrome, stemming from mutations in the CACNA1C gene, particularly the G406R mutation.
39580446 GeneticVariation 2024 It remains underexplored whether individuals with the canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) exhibit overlapping symptoms.
39079396 GeneticVariation 2024 In this study, we generated a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line from a Timothy syndrome infant carrying heterozygous CACNA1C mutation (transcript variant NM_000719.7c.1216G>A: p.G406R).
39420001 GeneticVariation 2024 The canonical G406R mutation that increases Ca2+ influx through the CACNA1C-encoded CaV1.2 Ca2+ channel underlies the multisystem disorder Timothy syndrome (TS), characterized by life-threatening arrhythmias.
38826393 GeneticVariation 2024 Furthermore, it has remained underexplored whether individuals harboring canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) have additional symptoms.
39420001 GeneticVariation 2024 The canonical G406R mutation that increases Ca2+ influx through the CACNA1C-encoded CaV1.2 Ca2+ channel underlies the multisystem disorder Timothy syndrome (TS), characterized by life-threatening arrhythmias.

If you want to inspect the evidences for Schizophrenia, and all the variants in a particular gene, use the argument gene.

results <- disease2evidence( disease  = "UMLS_C1832916",
                   gene = "775", vocabulary = "ENTREZ",
                   type = "VDA",  database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN",
                   score    = c( 0.7,1 ) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-evidence 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0.7-1 
##  . Term:        UMLS_C1832916 
##  . Results:  22
results <- results@qresult
results <- results %>% dplyr::filter(reference_type =="PMID")%>%
    select(reference, associationType, pmYear, sentence) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmYear))%>% head(10)

results <- results %>% dplyr::rename(Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)
results %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption ="Selection of evidences supporting associations between C0036341 & CACNA1C") 
Table 28: Selection of evidences supporting associations between C0036341 & CACNA1C
pmid associationType Year Sentence
39079396 GeneticVariation 2024 In this study, we generated a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line from a Timothy syndrome infant carrying heterozygous CACNA1C mutation (transcript variant NM_000719.7c.1216G>A: p.G406R).
38826393 GeneticVariation 2024 Furthermore, it has remained underexplored whether individuals harboring canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) have additional symptoms.
38968219 GeneticVariation 2024 Long QT Syndrome type 8 (LQT8) is a cardiac arrhythmic disorder associated with Timothy Syndrome, stemming from mutations in the CACNA1C gene, particularly the G406R mutation.
39580446 GeneticVariation 2024 It remains underexplored whether individuals with the canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) exhibit overlapping symptoms.
38968219 GeneticVariation 2024 Long QT Syndrome type 8 (LQT8) is a cardiac arrhythmic disorder associated with Timothy Syndrome, stemming from mutations in the CACNA1C gene, particularly the G406R mutation.
39580446 GeneticVariation 2024 It remains underexplored whether individuals with the canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) exhibit overlapping symptoms.
39079396 GeneticVariation 2024 In this study, we generated a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line from a Timothy syndrome infant carrying heterozygous CACNA1C mutation (transcript variant NM_000719.7c.1216G>A: p.G406R).
39420001 GeneticVariation 2024 The canonical G406R mutation that increases Ca2+ influx through the CACNA1C-encoded CaV1.2 Ca2+ channel underlies the multisystem disorder Timothy syndrome (TS), characterized by life-threatening arrhythmias.
38826393 GeneticVariation 2024 Furthermore, it has remained underexplored whether individuals harboring canonical Gly406Arg variants in mutually exclusive exon 8A (Timothy syndrome 1) or exon 8 (Timothy syndrome 2) have additional symptoms.
39420001 GeneticVariation 2024 The canonical G406R mutation that increases Ca2+ influx through the CACNA1C-encoded CaV1.2 Ca2+ channel underlies the multisystem disorder Timothy syndrome (TS), characterized by life-threatening arrhythmias.

Searching multiple diseases

results <- disease2variant(
              disease = paste0("UMLS_",c("C3150943",  "C1859062", "C1832916", "C4015695")),
              database = "CURATED", 
              score = c(0.6, 1) )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-variant 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0.6-1 
##  . Term:       UMLS_C3150943 ... UMLS_C4015695 
##  . Results:  152

Table 29 shows the variants associated to a list of Long QT syndromes in the curated data in DISGENET.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%  dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))
tab[is.na(tab)] <- ""
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Variants associated to a list of Long QT syndromes") 
Table 29: Variants associated to a list of Long QT syndromes
variantid disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
rs137854601 LONG QT SYNDROME 3 0.8 1993 2022
rs137854600 LONG QT SYNDROME 3 0.8 1993 2022
rs121912507 Long Qt Syndrome 2 0.7 1993 2022
rs28937317 LONG QT SYNDROME 3 0.7 1993 2022
rs9333649 Long Qt Syndrome 2 0.7 1993 2022
rs79891110 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1993 2016
rs786205745 Timothy syndrome 0.7 1993 2004
rs199472916 Long Qt Syndrome 2 0.7
rs76420733 Long Qt Syndrome 2 0.6 1990 2022
rs199473099 LONG QT SYNDROME 3 0.6 1991 2015

Visualizing the variants associated to multiple diseases

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a list of diseases can be visualized as a Variant-Disease Network, or as a Variant-Disease Heatmap (Figure 33), by changing the class argument from “Network” to “Heatmap”.

plot( results,     
      type = "Network", interactive =TRUE)

Figure 33: The Variant-Disease Network for a list of diseases

The results can be visualized as a Heatmap (Figure 34).

plot( results,
      type = "Heatmap", 
      limit = 100, 
      interactive=T)

Figure 34: The Variant-Disease Heatmap for a list of diseases

Searching by gene

results <- gene2vda(
              gene = "APP",
              database = "CURATED" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-disease 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        APP 
##  . Results:  17

Table 30 shows the top variants associated to the APP gene in the curated data in DISGENET.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("variantid", "gene_symbols", "disease_name","score", "yearInitial", "yearFinal")] ) %>%  dplyr::arrange(desc(score), yearInitial, desc(yearFinal))

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top variants associated to APP") 
Table 30: Top variants associated to APP
variantid gene_symbols disease_name score yearInitial yearFinal
rs63750264 APP Alzheimer’s Disease 0.7 1991 2020
rs63750579 APP Alzheimer’s Disease 0.6 1990 2020
rs63750579 APP CEREBRAL AMYLOID ANGIOPATHY, APP-RELATED 0.6 1990 2019
rs63750264 APP ALZHEIMER DISEASE, FAMILIAL, 1 0.6 1991 2020
rs63749964 APP ALZHEIMER DISEASE, FAMILIAL, 1 0.6 1991 2020
rs63750066 APP Alzheimer’s Disease 0.6 1992 2020
rs63751039 APP ALZHEIMER DISEASE, FAMILIAL, 1 0.6 1992 2020
rs63750671 APP ALZHEIMER DISEASE, FAMILIAL, 1 0.6 1992 2020
rs63750734 APP Alzheimer’s Disease 0.6 1993 2020
rs63750734 APP ALZHEIMER DISEASE, FAMILIAL, 1 0.6 1993 2020

Visualizing the variant-disease associations retrieved for a gene

The results of querying DISGENET variant information with a gene can be visualized as a Variant-Disease Network, or as a Variant-Disease Heatmap (Figure 35), if the input is a list of genes, by changing the class argument from Network to Heatmap. The genes can be shown by setting the showGenes argument to “TRUE”.

plot( results,     
      type = "Network", interactive =TRUE)

Figure 35: The Variant-Disease Network for a gene

Searching by variant and chemical

results <- variant2disease( variant   = "rs121434568",
                          database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN",
                          chemical = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1173655")
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-disease 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        rs121434568 
##  . Results:  11

Table 31 shows the VDAs associated to rs121434568 and afatinib.

tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(variantid, disease_name, chemical_name, score) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(score))

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "VDAs associated to rs121434568 and afatinib") 
Table 31: VDAs associated to rs121434568 and afatinib
variantid disease_name chemical_name score
rs121434568 Adenocarcinoma of lung (disorder) Afatinib 0.7
rs121434568 Carcinoma of lung Afatinib 0.7
rs121434568 Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma Afatinib 0.3
rs121434568 Malignant neoplasm of lung Afatinib 0.3
rs121434568 Metastatic malignant neoplasm Afatinib 0.2
rs121434568 Metastatic Lung Adenocarcinoma Afatinib 0.2
rs121434568 Metastatic malignant neoplasm to brain Afatinib 0.2
rs121434568 Metastatic Malignant Neoplasm to the Leptomeninges Afatinib 0.2
rs121434568 Dyspnea Afatinib 0.2
rs121434568 Coughing Afatinib 0.1

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 36: VDAs associated to rs121434568 and afatinib

Retrieving the chemicals associated to a variant

The variant2chemical function allows to retrieve the chemicals associated to a variant

results <- variant2chemical( variant =  "rs1801133",
                          database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" , score = c(0.3,1))
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        variant-chemical 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0.3-1 
##  . Term:        rs1801133 
##  . Results:  66
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select( disease_name, chemical_name, chemical_effect, sentence, reference, pmYear)
tab <- tab[1:10, ] %>% dplyr::rename( Disease = disease_name, Chemical = chemical_name,
                        `Chemical Effect`=chemical_effect, Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(Year))

tab %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Chemicals associated to rs1801133" ) 
Table 32: Chemicals associated to rs1801133
Disease Chemical Chemical Effect Sentence pmid Year
Schizophrenia Risperidone therapeutic C677T Polymorphism in the MTHFR Gene Is Associated With Risperidone-Induced Weight Gain in Schizophrenia. 32714219 2020
Diastolic blood pressure Homocysteine other Cholesterol, LDLcalc (LDLcalculaed), and homocysteine blood levels significantly contributed to the effect of MTHFR C677T polymorphism on the DBP trait. 25165067 2015
Colorectal Carcinoma Fluorouracil therapeutic This study suggested that MTHFR C677T and A1298C are associated with prognosis in CRC patients undergoing 5-FU-based chemotherapy. 26111049 2015
Schizophrenia Homocysteine other The aim was to detect a serum level of Hcy, examine the associations between the level of Hcy, methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene C677T polymorphism and clinical properties for patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders and in a control group. 23586533 2014
Schizophrenia Homocysteine other The aim was to examine the serum levels of homocysteine (Hcy) and their associations with the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene C677T polymorphism in patients with schizophrenia and mood disorders as well as controls. 23091720 2012
Systolic Pressure Benazepril other There were no significant interactions or effect modification between MTHFR C677T and MS A2756G gene polymorphisms in models of baseline SBP, baseline DBP or DBP response to Benazepril treatment. 20445573 2011
Schizophrenia Homocysteine other Folate, homocysteine, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor alfa levels, but not the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase C677T polymorphism, are risk factors for schizophrenia. 19939410 2010
Schizophrenia Homocysteine other|other|other In addition to the prevalence of the 677C–>T mutation in the 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, we compared plasma and red blood cell (RBC) folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and homocysteine (Hcy) concentrations of 35 schizophrenic patients with those of 104 unrelated controls. 14572619 2003
Schizophrenia VITAMIN B12 other|other|other In addition to the prevalence of the 677C–>T mutation in the 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, we compared plasma and red blood cell (RBC) folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and homocysteine (Hcy) concentrations of 35 schizophrenic patients with those of 104 unrelated controls. 14572619 2003
Schizophrenia Pyridoxine other|other|other In addition to the prevalence of the 677C–>T mutation in the 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, we compared plasma and red blood cell (RBC) folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and homocysteine (Hcy) concentrations of 35 schizophrenic patients with those of 104 unrelated controls. 14572619 2003

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, 
     type="Network",   
     interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 37: Chemicals associated to rs1801133

Retrieving associations involving Chemicals from DISGENET

Retrieving genes, variants, and diseases associated to chemicals

The chemical2gene function allows to retrieve the GDAS for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2gene( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1009" , database = "ALL" , n_pags = 5)
## Notice that your query has a maximum of 14 pages.
## By indicating n_pags = 5, your query of 14 pages has been reduced to 5 pages.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-gene 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL1009 
##  . Results:  90
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol,gene_type , chemical_name, pmids_chemical) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmids_chemical))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Genes associated to levodopa") 
Table 33: Genes associated to levodopa
gene_symbol gene_type chemical_name pmids_chemical
COMT protein-coding Levodopa 39
GH1 protein-coding Levodopa 25
DRD2 protein-coding Levodopa 24
PRKN protein-coding Levodopa 19
GCH1 protein-coding Levodopa 18
SLC6A3 protein-coding Levodopa 17
SNCA protein-coding Levodopa 17
DDC protein-coding Levodopa 15
DRD1 protein-coding Levodopa 15
TH protein-coding Levodopa 14

The results can be visualized as a Chemical-Gene Network (Figure 38).

plot( results,
      type = "Network", interactive=T)

Figure 38: The Chemical-Gene Network for a single chemical

The chemical2disease function allows to retrieve the diseases for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals, and the information cab be extracted from GDAs or VDAs. To specify from where, use the type parameter.

results <- chemical2disease( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1009" , type = "GDA", database = "ALL" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL1009 
##  . Results:  208
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(diseaseid, disease_name, chemical_name, pmids_chemical) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmids_chemical))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases associated to levodopa, type GDA", align= "lllc") 
Table 34: Diseases associated to levodopa, type GDA
diseaseid disease_name chemical_name pmids_chemical
C0030567 Parkinson Disease Levodopa 283
C0013384 Dyskinetic syndrome Levodopa 188
C0242422 Parkinsonian Disorders Levodopa 77
C0393593 Dystonia Disorders Levodopa 28
C0013421 Dystonia Levodopa 25
C1851920 Dopa-Responsive Dystonia Levodopa 12
C0392702 Abnormal involuntary movements Levodopa 10
C0002395 Alzheimer’s Disease Levodopa 8
C0020615 Hypoglycemia Levodopa 8
C0033975 Psychotic Disorders Levodopa 8
plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      interactive=T)

Figure 39: The Chemical-Disease Network for a chemical

A DiseaseClass plot is also available.

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      class = "DiseaseClass",
      interactive=T)

Figure 40: The Chemical-Disease Class Network for a chemical

For VDAs

results <- chemical2disease( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1282" , type = "VDA", database =  "ALL" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-disease 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL1282 
##  . Results:  3
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(diseaseid, disease_name, chemical_name, pmids_chemical)  %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmids_chemical))
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Diseases associated to imiquimod, type VDA",  align= "lllc") 
Table 35: Diseases associated to imiquimod, type VDA
diseaseid disease_name chemical_name pmids_chemical
C4721806 Skin Basal Cell Carcinoma Imiquimod 2
C0025202 melanoma Imiquimod 1
C0151779 Cutaneous Melanoma Imiquimod 1
plot( results,
      type = "Network", interactive=T)

Figure 41: The Chemical-Disease Network for a chemical

The chemical2variant function allows to retrieve the variants for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2variant( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL108", database = "ALL"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-variant 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:         
##  . Results:  37
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(variantid, gene_symbols, most_severe_consequence, chemical_name, pmids_chemical) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmids_chemical))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "VDAs for carbamazepine", align= "llllc") 
Table 36: VDAs for carbamazepine
variantid gene_symbols most_severe_consequence chemical_name pmids_chemical
rs3812718 SCN1A splice_donor_5th_base_variant Carbamazepine 8
rs1045642 ABCB1 missense_variant Carbamazepine 6
rs776746 ZSCAN25, CYP3A5 splice_acceptor_variant Carbamazepine 5
rs1801133 MTHFR missense_variant Carbamazepine 4
rs2298771 SCN1A , LOC102724058 missense_variant Carbamazepine 4
rs2032582 ABCB1 missense_variant Carbamazepine 3
rs1389503611 EPHX1 missense_variant Carbamazepine 2
rs15524 ZSCAN25, CYP3A5 3_prime_UTR_variant Carbamazepine 2
rs1801131 MTHFR missense_variant Carbamazepine 2
rs2234922 EPHX1 missense_variant Carbamazepine 2

The chemical2variant function can also receive as a parameter sift and polyphen scores to restrict the results to variants predicted as probably deleterious.

results <- chemical2variant( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL108", database = "ALL", sift = c(0,0.05), polyphen = c(0.9,1)  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-variant 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:         
##  . Results:  11
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(variantid, gene_symbols, sift_score, polyphen_score, chemical_name, pmids_chemical) %>% dplyr::arrange(desc(pmids_chemical))
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "VDAs for carbamazepine", align= "llllc") 
Table 37: VDAs for carbamazepine
variantid gene_symbols sift_score polyphen_score chemical_name pmids_chemical
rs1045642 ABCB1 0.02 0.998 Carbamazepine 6
rs1389503611 EPHX1 0.01 0.995 Carbamazepine 2
rs762468188 TMEM63A, EPHX1 0.00 1.000 Carbamazepine 2
rs1051740 EPHX1 0.00 0.987 Carbamazepine 1
rs121912438 SOD1 0.00 0.967 Carbamazepine 1
rs1451636751 UGT2B7 0.01 0.998 Carbamazepine 1
rs1553491169 SCN1A-AS1, SCN9A 0.00 0.956 Carbamazepine 1
rs1555085798 KCNA1 0.00 1.000 Carbamazepine 1
rs211037 GABRG2 0.02 0.977 Carbamazepine 1
rs796052508 GABRG2 0.03 0.997 Carbamazepine 1
plot( results,
      type = "Network", interactive=T)

Figure 42: The Chemical-Variant Network for carbamazepine

Retrieving GDAs and VDAs associated to chemicals

Exploring the GDAs of a chemical

The chemical2gda function allows to retrieve the GDAS for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2gda( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL809", database = "ALL"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-gda 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL809 
##  . Results:  338
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol, disease_name, chemical_name, score, pmids_chemical)
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "GDAs for sertraline") 
Table 38: GDAs for sertraline
gene_symbol disease_name chemical_name score pmids_chemical
HTT Huntington Disease Sertraline 1 1
CRP Inflammation Sertraline 1 2
BDNF Mental Depression Sertraline 1 8
IL1B Inflammation Sertraline 1 1
SLC6A4 Depressive disorder Sertraline 1 3
SLC6A4 Mental Depression Sertraline 1 2
CRP Coronary heart disease Sertraline 1 1
CCL2 Inflammation Sertraline 1 1
SLC6A4 Anxiety Disorders Sertraline 1 2
IL10 Inflammation Sertraline 1 1

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 43: Network for LEPR and metformin

Exploring the VDAs of a chemical

The chemical2vda function allows to retrieve the VDAS for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2vda( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL2010601", database = "ALL"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-vda 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL2010601 
##  . Results:  19

The chemical2vda function can also receive as a parameter sift and polyphen scores to restrict the results to variants predicted as probably deleterious.

results <- chemical2vda( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL2010601", 
                         database = "ALL", 
                         sift = c(0,0.05) , polyphen = c(0.9,1)  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-vda 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL2010601 
##  . Results:  15
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(variantid, disease_name, chemical_name, score,pmids_chemical)
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "VDAs associated ivacaftor") 
Table 39: VDAs associated ivacaftor
variantid disease_name chemical_name score pmids_chemical
rs75527207 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.9 47
rs78655421 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.9 4
rs368505753 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.8 1
rs121909005 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.8 2
rs74503330 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.8 2
rs121908757 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.6 2
rs397508442 Cystic Fibrosis Ivacaftor 0.6 1
rs75527207 Lung diseases Ivacaftor 0.2 3
rs75527207 Paranasal Sinus Disorder Ivacaftor 0.1 1
rs75527207 Rhinosinusitis Ivacaftor 0.1 1

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 44: Network of VDAs

Exploring the GDA evidences of a chemical

The chemical2evidence function allows to retrieve the evidences for the GDAS or VDAs for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2evidence( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL1069", type = "GDA" , database = "ALL" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-gda 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL1069 
##  . Results:  810
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab%>% dplyr::select(gene_symbol, disease_name, chemical_name, sentence,chemical_effect, reference, pmYear)
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename(Gene = gene_symbol, Disease = disease_name, Chemical = chemical_name,  `Chemical Effect` =chemical_effect,    Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference)
tab <- tab[ order(-tab$Year),]
tab[1:10, ] %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Evidences for Valsartan" ) 
Table 40: Evidences for Valsartan
Gene Disease Chemical Sentence Chemical Effect pmid Year
NPPA Heart failure Valsartan We measured plasma mature BNP, proBNP and total BNP (mature BNP+proBNP) levels with our immunochemiluminescent assay as well as NT-proBNP, A-type natriuretic peptide (ANP) and BNPcom with conventional assays in 54 patients with heart failure, before (baseline) and after 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks of sacubitril/valsartan administration. therapeutic|therapeutic 39988342 2025
NPPB Heart failure Valsartan We measured plasma mature BNP, proBNP and total BNP (mature BNP+proBNP) levels with our immunochemiluminescent assay as well as NT-proBNP, A-type natriuretic peptide (ANP) and BNPcom with conventional assays in 54 patients with heart failure, before (baseline) and after 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks of sacubitril/valsartan administration. therapeutic|therapeutic 39988342 2025
NPPB Heart failure Valsartan The authors examined the efficacy of sacubitril/valsartan according to NT-proBNP levels in patients with reduced, mildly reduced, and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) enrolled in PARADIGM-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme Inhibitor to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure Trial) and PARAGON-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Receptor Blockers Global Outcomes in HF with Preserved Ejection Fraction). therapeutic|therapeutic 40088233 2025
NPPA Congestive heart failure Valsartan We measured plasma mature BNP, proBNP and total BNP (mature BNP+proBNP) levels with our immunochemiluminescent assay as well as NT-proBNP, A-type natriuretic peptide (ANP) and BNPcom with conventional assays in 54 patients with heart failure, before (baseline) and after 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks of sacubitril/valsartan administration. therapeutic|other 39988342 2025
NPPB Congestive heart failure Valsartan The authors examined the efficacy of sacubitril/valsartan according to NT-proBNP levels in patients with reduced, mildly reduced, and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) enrolled in PARADIGM-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme Inhibitor to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure Trial) and PARAGON-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Receptor Blockers Global Outcomes in HF with Preserved Ejection Fraction). therapeutic|other 40088233 2025
NPPB Congestive heart failure Valsartan We measured plasma mature BNP, proBNP and total BNP (mature BNP+proBNP) levels with our immunochemiluminescent assay as well as NT-proBNP, A-type natriuretic peptide (ANP) and BNPcom with conventional assays in 54 patients with heart failure, before (baseline) and after 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks of sacubitril/valsartan administration. other|therapeutic 39988342 2025
NPPB Reduced ejection fraction Valsartan The authors examined the efficacy of sacubitril/valsartan according to NT-proBNP levels in patients with reduced, mildly reduced, and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) enrolled in PARADIGM-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Converting-Enzyme Inhibitor to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure Trial) and PARAGON-HF (Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor with Angiotensin-Receptor Blockers Global Outcomes in HF with Preserved Ejection Fraction). other|other 40088233 2025
NPPB Fibrosis Valsartan In contrast to sST2, NT-proBNP is also associated with fibrosis, suggesting that both biomarkers unveil distinct mechanisms during CR in patients treated with sacubitril/valsartan. other|other 39889435 2025
MME Diabetic Cardiomyopathies Valsartan Sacubitril/Valsartan effectively reduced plasma neprilysin activity in both diabetic patients with pre-clinical HFpEF from the PARABLE trial (baseline (Val n = 25; Sac/Val n = 35) and 3 months after treatment (Val n = 21/25; Sac/Val n = 33/35)) and DbCM (high-fat diet and streptozotocin) mice. other|other|other 40369551 2025
PLA2G4A Kidney Failure, Chronic Valsartan The disordered metabolism may reduce the sensitivity of patients to sacubitril/valsartan treatment, and PLA2G4A targeted inhibitors may be a promising therapeutic strategy to improve the sensitivity of patients with ESRD and HF to sacubitril/valsartan treatment. other|therapeutic 40058083 2025

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 45: Chemicals associated to Parkinson

Exploring the VDA evidences of a chemical

results <- chemical2evidence( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL502", type = "VDA" , database = "TEXTMINING_HUMAN" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical-vda 
##  . Database:     TEXTMINING_HUMAN 
##  . Score:        0-1 
##  . Term:        CHEMBL502 
##  . Results:  10
tab <- results@qresult
tab <-tab %>% dplyr::select(variantid, disease_name, chemical_name, sentence,chemical_effect, reference, pmYear)
tab <- tab %>% dplyr::rename( Disease = disease_name, Chemical = chemical_name,
                            `Chemical Effect` =chemical_effect,  Year=pmYear, Sentence = sentence, pmid = reference )
tab <- tab[ order(-tab$Year),]
tab[1:10,] %>%  dplyr::mutate(
    pmid = kableExtra::cell_spec(pmid,  link = paste0("https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/", pmid) )) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = 'markdown', row.names = F,  caption = "Evidences for Donepezil" ) 
Table 41: Evidences for Donepezil
variantid Disease Chemical Sentence Chemical Effect pmid Year
rs2177370 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil Association of CHAT Gene Polymorphism rs3793790 and rs2177370 with Donepezil Response and the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease Continuum. therapeutic 38894884 2024
rs3793790 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil Association of CHAT Gene Polymorphism rs3793790 and rs2177370 with Donepezil Response and the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease Continuum. therapeutic 38894884 2024
rs1080985 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil The CYP2D6 SNP rs1080985 might be a useful pharmacogenetic marker of the long-term therapeutic response to donepezil in patients with AD. therapeutic 34120801 2022
rs1065852 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil This study explored the influence of apolipoprotein E3 and CYP2D6 (rs1065852) gene polymorphisms on therapeutic responses to donepezil in Han Chinese patients with Alzheimer’s disease. therapeutic 26768225 2016
rs1080985 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil Recent data have indicated that the rs1080985 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2D6 and the common apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene may affect the response to donepezil in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). therapeutic 25538729 2014
rs1080985 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil We investigated the association between response to donepezil and the rs1080985 single nucleotide polymorphism, the minor allele (G) of which was previously reported to be associated with a poor response to this drug in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. therapeutic 23950644 2013
rs1080985 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil In a sample of 415 AD cases, we found evidence of association between rs1080985 and response to donepezil after 6 months of therapy (OR [95% CI]: 1.74 [1.01-3.00], p = 0.04). therapeutic 22465999 2012
rs1045642 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil Fifty-four Italian patients diagnosed with probable mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, treated with donepezil (37 patients 5 mg/day, 17 patients 10 mg/day) were genotyped for CYP3A4 (1B, 3, and 4), CYP3A5 (2, 3, and 6) and ABCB1 (3435C>T, 2677G>T/A, and 1236C>T) polymorphisms. therapeutic 20931330 2011
rs1128503 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil Fifty-four Italian patients diagnosed with probable mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, treated with donepezil (37 patients 5 mg/day, 17 patients 10 mg/day) were genotyped for CYP3A4 (1B, 3, and 4), CYP3A5 (2, 3, and 6) and ABCB1 (3435C>T, 2677G>T/A, and 1236C>T) polymorphisms. therapeutic 20931330 2011
rs1080985 Alzheimer’s Disease Donepezil The single nucleotide polymorphism rs1080985 in the CYP2D6 gene may influence the clinical efficacy of donepezil in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease (AD). therapeutic 19738170 2009

To visualize the results use the plot function.

plot(results, type="Network",   interactive=T, limit=50)

Figure 46: Evidence network

Exploring the attributes of a chemical

The chemical2attribute function allows to retrieve the information for a specific chemical, or list of chemicals.

results <- chemical2attribute( chemical  = "CHEMBL_CHEMBL25"  )
## Warning: Unknown or uninitialised column: `chemicalid`.
## Unknown or uninitialised column: `chemicalid`.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        chemical 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:         
##  . Results:  5
tab <-results@qresult %>% select(chemID, chemVocabulariesCrossreferences, chemPrefName)
knitr::kable(tab, caption = "Attributes for Acetylsalic acid") 
Table 42: Attributes for Acetylsalic acid
chemID chemVocabulariesCrossreferences chemPrefName
CHEMBL25 CHEMBL_CHEMBL25 Acetylsalicylic acid
CHEMBL25 CHEBI_15365 Acetylsalicylic acid
CHEMBL25 DRUGBANK_DB00945 Acetylsalicylic acid
CHEMBL25 MESH_D001241 Acetylsalicylic acid
CHEMBL25 PUBCHEM_2244 Acetylsalicylic acid

Retrieving Disease-Disease Associations from DISGENET

The disgenet2r package also allows to obtain a list of diseases that share genes or variants with a particular disease, or disease list (disease-disease associations, or DDAs).

Searching DDAs by genes for a single disease

To obtain disease-disease associations, use the disease2disease function. This function uses as input a disease, in the same format that in disease2gene, the database to perform the search (by default, CURATED), and the argument relationship, to indicate the type of relationship of the disease pair. If the relationship is set to “has_shared_genes”, arguments such as min_genes, the minimum number of shared genes between the disease(s) of interest, and jg, the Jaccard Index for genes, can be defined. By default min_genes = 0. If the relationship is set to “has_shared_variants”, similar arguments to filter the results of the search can be defined.

The output is a DataGeNET.DGN object that contains the top diseases that share genes with the disease that has been searched.

The DataGeNET.DGN object produced by the disease2disease function also contains the Jaccard Index, also known as the Jaccard similarity coefficient for each disease pair. The Jaccard Coefficient is a similarity metric, computed as the size of the intersection divided by the size of the union of two sample sets, in this case, the genes associates to each disease:

\[\begin{equation*} J(A, B) = \frac{\mid A \cap B \mid}{\mid A \cup B \mid} \end{equation*}\]

We calculate a p value to estimate the significance of the Jaccard coefficient for a list of disease pairs. The p value is estimated using a Fisher exact test. The pvalue column displays the minus logarithm of the p value for the Jaccard Index, and is available for disease-disease associations by shared genes and by shared variants.

results <- disease2disease(
  disease  = "UMLS_C0010674", relationship = "has_shared_genes",
  database = "CURATED" ,   min_genes =2 )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0010674 
##  . Results:  26

Table 43 shows the diseases that share at least a gene with Cystic Fibrosis (UMLS_C0010674) in DISGENET curated.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("disease1_Name", "disease2_Name","jaccard_genes","shared_genes", "pvalue_jaccard_genes")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases that share genes with Cystic Fibrosis") 
Table 43: Diseases that share genes with Cystic Fibrosis
disease1_Name disease2_Name jaccard_genes shared_genes pvalue_jaccard_genes
Cystic Fibrosis Chronic Obstructive Airway Disease 0.11724 17 22.4
Cystic Fibrosis BRONCHIECTASIS WITH OR WITHOUT ELEVATED SWEAT CHLORIDE 1 0.15254 9 21.6
Cystic Fibrosis Asthma 0.08065 20 21.5
Cystic Fibrosis CFTR-related disorder 0.13559 8 19.1
Cystic Fibrosis Congenital bilateral aplasia of vas deferens 0.13333 8 18.2
Cystic Fibrosis Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic 0.08383 14 16.0
Cystic Fibrosis Hereditary pancreatitis 0.11940 8 15.0
Cystic Fibrosis Hypertensive disease 0.04942 17 14.3
Cystic Fibrosis Alzheimer’s Disease 0.05512 14 12.7
Cystic Fibrosis Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent 0.04011 15 11.2

Visualizing the diseases associated to a single disease

The plot function applied to the DataGeNET.DGN object generated by the disease2disease function results in a Disease-Disease Network, where the node in dark blue is the disease of interest and nodes in light blue are the diseases that share genes with it (Figure 47). The node size is proportional to the number of genes associated to each disease.

plot( results, 
      type = "Network",
      interactive=T )

Figure 47: The Disease-Disease Network by shared genes for Cystic Fibrosis

Searching DDAs via genes for multiple diseases

The function disease2disease can also use as an input a list of diseases in any of the previously described vocabularies. It will retrieve the top diseases that share genes with each of the diseases in the input list.

Table 44 shows the disease list selected for illustrating the disease2disease function

Table 44: Examples of Congenital metabolic diseases
UMLS_CUI Disease_Name
C0162671 MELAS Syndrome
C0023264 Leigh Disease
C0917796 Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber
diseasesOfInterest <-  paste0("UMLS_", c("C0162671", "C0023264", "C0917796"))
results <- disease2disease(
              disease = diseasesOfInterest, relationship = "has_shared_genes",
              database = "CURATED",
              min_genes  = 20, 
              order_by = "JACCARD_GENES" )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-disease-gene 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:       UMLS_C0162671 ... UMLS_C0917796 
##  . Results:  19

Table 45 shows the diseases that share at least 20 genes with the diseases of interest.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("disease1_Name", "disease2_Name","jaccard_genes","shared_genes", "pvalue_jaccard_genes")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases that share at list 20 genes with the diseases of interest") 
Table 45: Diseases that share at list 20 genes with the diseases of interest
disease1_Name disease2_Name jaccard_genes shared_genes pvalue_jaccard_genes
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber MELAS Syndrome 0.64815 35 87
MELAS Syndrome Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber 0.64815 35 87
MELAS Syndrome Mitochondrial Diseases 0.18056 39 68
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Neuropathy, Ataxia, and Retinitis Pigmentosa 0.55319 26 68
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Striatonigral Degeneration, Infantile, Mitochondrial 0.55319 26 68
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber MITOCHONDRIAL COMPLEX V (ATP SYNTHASE) DEFICIENCY, MITOCHONDRIAL TYPE 1 0.55319 26 68
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Flexion contracture of proximal interphalangeal joint of finger 0.54167 26 66
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Wide spaced nipples (finding) 0.53061 26 65
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Cleft palate and bilateral cleft lip 0.50980 26 63
Optic Atrophy, Hereditary, Leber Hypoplasia of scrotum 0.50980 26 63

To obtain the network, set the class argument of the plot function to Network(Figure 48). In this network, the nodes are the diseases of interest, and the node size is proportional to the number of genes associated with them. On the other hand, the edges size is proportional to the number of genes that are shared between the diseases they are connecting.

plot( results,
      type = "Network",
      interactive=TRUE)

Figure 48: The Disease-Disease Network by shared genes for a list of diseases

Searching DDAs via shared variants for a single disease

To obtain disease-disease associations via shared genetic variants, use the disease2disease function with the argument relationship equal to “has_shared_variants”, the database to perform the search (by default, CURATED), and the argument min_vars, the minimum number of shared variants between the disease(s) of interest. By default min_vars = 0. The output is a DataGeNET.DGN object that contains the top diseases that share variants with the disease that has been searched.
In the example, we have specified a minimum value for the Jaccard Index computed from the shared variants (jv = 0.05).

results <- disease2disease(
  disease  = c("UMLS_C0011860", "UMLS_C0028754"),relationship = "has_shared_variants",
  database = "CURATED", jv = 0.01 )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-disease-variant 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:       UMLS_C0011860 ... UMLS_C0028754 
##  . Results:  84

Table 46 shows the top diseases that share variants with Obesity and NIDDM.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("disease1_Name", "disease2_Name","jaccard_variants","shared_variants", "pvalue_jaccard_variants")] )
tab <- tab[ order(-tab$shared_variants),]

knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Top diseases that share variants with Obesity and NIDDM", row.names = F) 
Table 46: Top diseases that share variants with Obesity and NIDDM
disease1_Name disease2_Name jaccard_variants shared_variants pvalue_jaccard_variants
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus 0.23296 10669 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetic Retinopathy 0.15681 9221 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Celiac Disease 0.09789 9057 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Ankylosing spondylitis 0.09605 8041 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Multiple Sclerosis 0.14214 7665 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Digestive System Disorders 0.11036 7372 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Dermatitis Herpetiformis 0.11621 7028 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Psoriasis 0.10536 6712 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Graves Disease 0.10717 6390 330
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Essential Hypertension 0.06339 6313 330

The plot function applied to the DataGeNET.DGN object generated by the disease2disease function results in a Disease-Disease Network, where the node in dark blue is the disease of interest and nodes in light blue are the diseases that share variants with it (Figure 49). The node size is proportional to the number of variants associated to each disease.

plot( results, 
      type = "Network",
       interactive=T )

Figure 49: The Disease-Disease Network by shared variants

Searching DDAs via semantic relationships

To obtain disease-disease associations via semantic relationships, use the disease2disease function with the argument relationship equal to one of the following types of semantic relations: has_manifestation, has_associated_morphology, manifestation_of, associated_morphology_of, is_finding_of_disease, due_to, has_definitional_manifestation, has_associated_finding, definitional_manifestation_of, disease_has_finding, cause_of, associated_finding_of.

The output is a DataGeNET.DGN object that contains the diseases that have the type of relationship defined in the query with the query disease.

results <- disease2disease(
  disease  = c("UMLS_C0011860", "UMLS_C0028754"),relationship = "has_manifestation", min_sokal = 0.7, order_by = "SOKAL",
  database = "CURATED"  )
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-disease-rela 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:       UMLS_C0011860 ... UMLS_C0028754 
##  . Results:  20

Table 47 shows the diseases associated with Obesity and Diabetes Mellitus non Insulin dependent (NIDDM) by the relation type “has_manifestation”.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("disease1_Name", "disease2_Name","ddaRelation","shared_genes", "pvalue_jaccard_genes")] )
knitr::kable(tab , caption = "Diseases associated with Obesity and NIDDM") 
Table 47: Diseases associated with Obesity and NIDDM
disease1_Name disease2_Name ddaRelation shared_genes pvalue_jaccard_genes
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent KERATODERMA-ICHTHYOSIS-DEAFNESS SYNDROME, AUTOSOMAL RECESSIVE has_manifestation 2 2.77
Obesity Obesity, Hyperphagia, and Developmental Delay has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity CHOPS SYNDROME has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity BARDET-BIEDL SYNDROME 18 has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity Pseudohypoparathyroidism Type 1C has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity Bardet-Biedl syndrome 4 has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity SHORT STATURE, BRACHYDACTYLY, IMPAIRED INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT, AND SEIZURES has_manifestation 1 1.67
Obesity Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism has_manifestation 1 1.67
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent MATURITY-ONSET DIABETES OF THE YOUNG, TYPE 13 has_manifestation 1 1.62
Obesity Bardet-Biedl syndrome 1 has_manifestation 2 1.45
Obesity MAGEL2-related Prader-Willi-like syndrome has_manifestation 1 1.37
Obesity CORTISONE REDUCTASE DEFICIENCY 2 has_manifestation 1 1.37
Obesity Pseudohypoparathyroidism, Type Ia has_manifestation 1 1.37
Obesity HYPOGONADOTROPIC HYPOGONADISM 27 WITHOUT ANOSMIA has_manifestation 1 1.37
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Carboxypeptidase E-related Prader-Willi-like syndrome (disorder) has_manifestation 1 1.32
Obesity Bardet-Biedl syndrome 2 has_manifestation 1 1.20
Obesity BARDET-BIEDL SYNDROME 6 has_manifestation 1 1.20
Obesity WAGR Syndrome has_manifestation 1 0.91
Obesity KLEEFSTRA SYNDROME 1 has_manifestation 1 0.85
Obesity DiGeorge Syndrome has_manifestation 1 0.47

Searching diseases similar to a disease of interest

It is possible to obtain the most similar diseases according to the Sokal-Sneath semantic similarity distance using the the get_similar_diseases function. The disease similarity between concepts is computed using the Sokal-Sneath semantic similarity distance (Sánchez and Batet 2011) on the taxonomic relations provided by the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus. Only the relationships of type is-a (which describe the taxonomy in any ontology) are taken into account. The get_similar_diseases function uses as input a disease, and as an optional argument min_sokal, a minimum value for the Sokal distance. By default min_sokal = 0.1.

results <- get_similar_diseases(
  disease  = "UMLS_C0011860",
    min_sokal = 0.6)
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      single 
##  . Type:        disease-disease-sokal 
##  . Database:     ALL 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:        UMLS_C0011860 
##  . Results:  130

In the Table 48, the top diseases associated to the disease, by Sokal distance

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("disease1_Name",  "disease2_Name","sokal")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases semantically similar to NIDDM") 
Table 48: Diseases semantically similar to NIDDM
disease1_Name disease2_Name sokal
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus 0.830
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Impaired glucose tolerance (disorder) 0.821
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus, Insulin-Dependent 0.706
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Hyperglycemia 0.695
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetic Retinopathy 0.687
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetic Nephropathy 0.685
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Gestational Diabetes 0.684
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Metabolic Syndrome X 0.677
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Insulin Resistance 0.668
Diabetes Mellitus, Non-Insulin-Dependent Kidney Diseases 0.609

Disease enrichment

The disease_enrichment function performs a disease enrichment (or over-representation) analysis. It determines whether a user-defined set of genes is statistically significantly associated with a disease gene set in DISGENET.

The function takes as input a list of entities, either genes or variants. They are compared against the gene/variant-disease associations in the selected database (by default, ALL) to determine the diseases associated with the given gene list. The genes can be identified with HGNC, ENSEMBL or Entrez identifiers.

The database parameter allows users to choose which data source to use: CURATED for curated gene-disease associations (the default option), CLINICALTRIALS for associations extracted from ClinicalTrials.gov, or ALL to include all available databases. The number of genes on the selected data source is used as background or universe of the over-representation test.

The common_entities parameter sets the minimum number of entities that must be shared with a disease for it to be considered in the analysis; the default is 1. The max_pvalue parameter sets a threshold for the p-value from the Fisher test (default is 0.05).

For genes

Below, an example of how to perform a disease enrichment with a list of genes extracted associated to Autism from the Developmental Brain Disorder Gene Database (Gonzalez-Mantilla et al. 2016).

genes <- c("ADNP", "ANKRD11", "ANKRD17",  "ASXL1",  "BCKDK",  "BRSK2",  "CDK13",  "CDK8",  "CHD2",  "CHD7",  "CHD8",  "CLCN2",  "CREBBP",  "CSDE1",  "CTCF",  "CTNNB1",  "DDX3X",  "FOXP1",  "GFER",  "H4C3",  "HNRNPUL2",  "IQSEC2",  "ITSN1",  "JARID2",  "LRP2",  "MARK2",  "MBOAT7",  "MYT1L",  "NAA15",  "NALCN",  "NAV3",  "NEXMIF" ,  "NSD1",  "PHF21A",  "POGZ",  "PRR12",  "QRICH1",  "SCAF1",  "SCN1A",  "SCN2A",  "SETD5",  "SHANK3",  "SIN3A",  "SOX11",  "SOX6",  "TANC2",  "TBCD",  "TCF20" ,  "TCF4",  "TCF7L2",  "TRAF7",  "TRIP12",  "WAC",  "WDR26",  "ZEB2",  "ZMYM2",  "ZNF292",  "ZSWIM6" )
results <- disease_enrichment(
   entities  = genes,
   common_entities = 5,
    vocabulary = "HGNC", database = "CURATED")
## Your query has 1 page.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-enrichment 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:       ADNP ... ZSWIM6

In the Table 49, the top diseases associated to the list of genes.

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("diseaseName",  "geneRatio", "bgRatio","pvalue")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases significantly associated with the list of genes") 
Table 49: Diseases significantly associated with the list of genes
diseaseName geneRatio bgRatio pvalue
Intellectual Disability 43/58 43/14132 0
Neurodevelopmental Disorders 37/58 37/14132 0
Neurodevelopmental delay 24/58 24/14132 0
Non-specific syndromic intellectual disability 23/58 23/14132 0
Neurodevelopmental abnormality 14/58 14/14132 0
Autistic Disorder 21/58 21/14132 0
Autism Spectrum Disorders 22/58 22/14132 0
Global developmental delay 19/58 19/14132 0
Developmental Disabilities 14/58 14/14132 0
Seizures 15/58 15/14132 0

To visualize the results of the enrichment, use the function plot. Use the argument cutoff to set a minimum p value threshold, and the argument limit to reduce the number of records shown (Figure 50). By default, the limit=50. The node size is proportional to the number of intersection between the user list and the disease.

plot( results, type = "Enrichment", count =4,  cutoff= 0.05)
The **Enrichment plot** for a list of genes

Figure 50: The Enrichment plot for a list of genes

For variants

Below, an example of how to perform a disease enrichment with a list of variants extracted from the publication Genomic Landscape and Mutational Signatures of Deafness-Associated Genes (Azaiez et al. 2018).

results <- disease_enrichment(
   entities  =  c("rs80338902","rs397516871","rs368341987","rs375050157","rs111033280","rs140884994","rs201076440","rs111033439","rs1296612982","rs41281314","rs397516875","rs143282422","rs142381713","rs35818432","rs111033225","rs200104362","rs201004645","rs34988750","rs373169422","rs397517356","rs188376296","rs199897298","rs200263980","rs200416912","rs184866544","rs397517344","rs41281310","rs727503066","rs727504710","rs143240767","rs145771342","rs376898963","rs397516878","rs181255269","rs188498736","rs111033192","rs117966637","rs914189193","rs181611778","rs111033194","rs111033248","rs111033262","rs111033333","rs111033529","rs146824138","rs483353055","rs528089082","rs747131589","rs111033536","rs45629132","rs371142158","rs727504654","rs192524347","rs527236122","rs111033186","rs111033287","rs139889944","rs200454015","rs397517328","rs111033275","rs150822759","rs200038092","rs201709513","rs370155266","rs45500891","rs111033196","rs111033360","rs397517322","rs111033524","rs727505166","rs79444516","rs35730265","rs45549044","rs111033361","rs370696868","rs727504309","rs533231493"),
    vocabulary = "DBSNP", database = "CURATED",)
## Your query has 1 page.
results
## Object of class 'DataGeNET.DGN'
##  . Search:      list 
##  . Type:        disease-enrichment 
##  . Database:     CURATED 
##  . Score:         
##  . Term:       rs80338902 ... rs533231493

In the Table 50, the top diseases associated to the list of variants

tab <- unique(results@qresult[  ,c("diseaseName",  "variantRatio", "bgRatio","pvalue")] )
knitr::kable(tab[1:10,], caption = "Diseases significantly associated with the list of variants") 
Table 50: Diseases significantly associated with the list of variants
diseaseName variantRatio bgRatio pvalue
Usher Syndrome, Type I 26/77 26/1630926 0
USHER SYNDROME, TYPE IIA 23/77 23/1630926 0
Deafness, Autosomal Recessive 1A 16/77 16/1630926 0
RETINITIS PIGMENTOSA 39 20/77 20/1630926 0
DEAFNESS, AUTOSOMAL RECESSIVE 2 13/77 13/1630926 0
Usher Syndrome 11/77 11/1630926 0
Deafness, Autosomal Dominant 3A 9/77 9/1630926 0
Deafness, Autosomal Recessive 12 11/77 11/1630926 0
USHER SYNDROME, TYPE ID 11/77 11/1630926 0
Deafness, Autosomal Dominant 11 9/77 9/1630926 0

Figure 51 shows the results of the enrichment.

plot( results, type = "Enrichment", count =4,  cutoff= 0.05, nchars = 60)
The **Enrichment plot** for a list of variants

Figure 51: The Enrichment plot for a list of variants

Versions

Get DISGENET data version

get_disgenet_version()
## [1] "{ status : OK , payload :{ apiVersion : 1.9.1 , dataVersion : DISGENET v25.3 , lastUpdate : Sept 29 2025 , version : DISGENET v25.3 }, httpStatus :200}"

disgenet2r version

## Version: 1.2.4

License

disgenet2r is distributed under the GPL-2 license.

References

Azaiez, Hela, Kevin T. Booth, Sean S. Ephraim, Bradley Crone, Elizabeth A. Black-Ziegelbein, Robert J. Marini, A. Eliot Shearer, et al. 2018. “Genomic Landscape and Mutational Signatures of Deafness-Associated Genes.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 103 (4): 484–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2018.08.006.
Gonzalez-Mantilla, Andrea J., Andres Moreno-De-Luca, David H. Ledbetter, and Christa Lese Martin. 2016. A Cross-Disorder Method to Identify Novel Candidate Genes for Developmental Brain Disorders.” JAMA Psychiatry 73 (3): 275–83. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2692.
Piñero, Janet, Juan Manuel Ramírez-Anguita, Josep Saüch-Pitarch, Francesco Ronzano, Emilio Centeno, Ferran Sanz, and Laura I Furlong. 2019. The DisGeNET knowledge platform for disease genomics: 2019 update.” Nucleic Acids Research, November. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz1021.
Piñero, Janet, Josep Saüch, Ferran Sanz, and Laura I. Furlong. 2021. “The DisGeNET Cytoscape App: Exploring and Visualizing Disease Genomics Data.” Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal 19: 2960–67. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2021.05.015.
Sánchez, David, and Montserrat Batet. 2011. Semantic similarity estimation in the biomedical domain: an ontology-based information-theoretic perspective.” Journal of Biomedical Informatics 44 (5): 749–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2011.03.013.