Comparing sex-specific association networks of chronic medical conditions

Abstract

Sex (i.e., male or female) has a significant influence on physiologic and pathologic processes, and therefore, studying sex-specific distributions of medical conditions is a rationally important step in the analysis of clinical data. In this study, using data from the Korean National Health Insurance Services, we systemically compare sex-specific association networks of chronic medical conditions, and present a network-theoretic analysis with a rewire metric to explore all possible pairs of chronic medical conditions that differentially cooccur in male and female population. Given that sex appears to interact with the co-occurrence of these chronic conditions, future research may wish to examine these conditions separately in males and females.