Seasonal allergic rhinitis and systems biology-oriented biomarker discovery

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in science and medicine in the systems approach. Instead of the reductionist approach that focuses on the physical and chemical properties of the individual components, systems biology aims to describe, understand, and explain from the complex biological systems that are studied: All levels of structural and functional complexity, explicitly including the supracellular domain; their systems behavior or phenotypes; their networks with relationships that interact with the genome, the environment, and the phenotype; and their multifactorial processes involved in maintaining homeostasis and the breakdown of homeostasis within the system. This shift from a more reductionist to a more holistic approach on both the epistemological (theoretical) and the methodological level is also important for the conceptualization and the development of biomarkers. Based on the dataset of a randomized controlled trial on the effects of a treatment of seasonal allergic rhinitis, using five different methods of permuted stepwise regression, three systems biology-oriented immunological pattern variables (biomarkers) were developed that demonstrated larger CV correct values than the separate cytokines with regard to the classification of cytokine samples in baseline (before treatment) and post-baseline (after treatment). This example demonstrates that a systems biological approach in both the conceptualization and development of biomarkers is promising. However, more empirical studies with larger datasets are necessary to confirm the positive results of the presented study.