Network Systems Pharmacology-Based Mechanism Study on the Beneficial Effects of Vitamin D against Psychosis in Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease with significant financial costs and negative impacts on quality of life. Psychotic symptoms, i.e., the presence of delusions and/or hallucinations, is a frequent complication of AD. About 50% of AD patients will develop psychotic symptoms (AD with Psychosis, or AD + P) and these patients will experience an even more rapid cognitive decline than AD patients without psychosis (AD-P). In a previous analysis on medication records of 776 AD patients, we had shown that use of Vitamin D was associated with delayed time to psychosis in AD patients and Vitamin D was used more by AD-P than AD + P patients. To explore the potential molecular mechanism behind our findings, we applied systems pharmacology approaches to investigate the crosstalk between AD and psychosis. Specifically, we built protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks with proteins encoded by AD- and psychosis-related genes and Vitamin D-perturbed genes. Using network analysis we identified several high-impact genes, including NOTCH4, COMT, CACNA1C and DRD3 which are related to calcium homeostasis. The new findings highlight the key role of calcium-related signaling pathways in AD + P development and may provide a new direction and facilitate hypothesis generation for future drug development.