%0 Journal Article
%T New application of intelligent agents in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis identifies unexpected specific genetic background
%A Silvana Penco
%A Massimo Buscema
%A Maria Patrosso
%A Alessandro Marocchi
%A Enzo Grossi
%J BMC Bioinformatics
%D 2008
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2105-9-254
%X Advanced intelligent systems based on novel coupling of artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms have been applied. The results obtained have been compared with those derived from the use of standard neural networks and classical statistical analysis. An unexpected discovery of a strong genetic background in sporadic ALS using a DNA multiarray panel and analytical processing of the data with advanced artificial neural networks was found. The predictive accuracy obtained with Linear Discriminant Analysis and Standard Artificial Neural Networks ranged from 70% to 79% (average 75.31%) and from 69.1 to 86.2% (average 76.6%) respectively. The corresponding value obtained with Advanced Intelligent Systems reached an average of 96.0% (range 94.4 to 97.6%). This latter approach allowed the identification of seven genetic variants essential to differentiate cases from controls: apolipoprotein E arg158cys; hepatic lipase -480 C/T; endothelial nitric oxide synthase 690 C/T and glu298asp; vitamin K-dependent coagulation factor seven arg353glu, glycoprotein Ia/IIa 873 G/A and E-selectin ser128arg.This study provides an alternative and reliable method to approach complex diseases. Indeed, the application of a novel artificial intelligence-based method offers a new insight into genetic markers of sporadic ALS pointing out the existence of a strong genetic background.Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motoneuron disease, is a relatively rare (incidence: 1¨C3/100.000 per year), progressive and fatal disease characterised by neurodegeneration involving primarily motor neurons of the cerebral cortex, brain stem and spinal cord. To date, most studies have focused upon the familial form of the disease, which accounts for less then 10% of cases, and which is usually inherited as autosomal dominant inheritance. The gene coding for copper/zinc superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) appears to be mutated in 10¨C20% in the familial form [1].Genetic risk factors f
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/9/254