Insights into pathophysiology of dystropy through the analysis of gene networks: an example of bronchial asthma and tuberculosis

Co-existence of bronchial asthma (BA) and tuberculosis (TB) is extremely uncommon (dystropic). We assume that this is caused by the interplay between genes involved into specific pathophysiological pathways that arrest simultaneous manifestation of BA and TB. Identification of common and specific genes may be important to determine the molecular genetic mechanisms leading to rare co-occurrence of these diseases and may contribute to the identification of susceptibility genes for each of these dystropic diseases. To address the issue, we propose a new methodological strategy that is based on reconstruction of associative networks that represent molecular relationships between proteins/genes associated with BA and TB, thus facilitating a better understanding of the biological context of antagonistic relationships between the diseases. The results of our study revealed a number of proteins/genes important for the development of both BA and TB.