Network Analysis of Comorbidities: Case Study of HIV/AIDS in Taiwan

Comorbidities are the presence of one or more additional disorders or diseases co-occurring with a primary disease or disorder. The purpose of this study is to identify diseases that co-occur with HIV/AIDS and analyze the gender differences. Data was collected from 536 HIV/AIDS admission medical records out of 1,377,469 admission medical records from 1997 to 2010 in Taiwan. In this study, the comorbidity relationships are presented in the phenotypic disease network (PDN), and φ-correlation is used to measure the distance between two diseases on the network. The results show that there is a high correlation in the following pairs/triad of diseases: human immunodeficiency virus infection with specified conditions (042) and pneumocystosis pneumonia (1363), human immunodeficiency virus infection with specified malignant neoplasms (0422) and kaposi’s sarcoma of other specified sites (1768), human immunodeficiency virus acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and unspecified (0429) and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (0463), and lastly, human immunodeficiency virus infection with specified infections (0420), meningoencephalitis due to toxoplasmosis (1300), and human immunodeficiency virus infection specified infections causing other specified infections (0421).