An Artificial Intelligence-Driven Multimorbidity Framework Reveals a Shared Metabolic and Immune Core Across Alzheimer’s Disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and Frontotemporal Dementia
<b>Background/Objectives:</b> Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) share molecular features yet differ clinically, suggesting underlying systems-level commonalities. We aimed to characterize shared and disease-specific multimorbidity architectures across AD, ALS, and FTD using an artificial intelligence-driven literature-based semantic network. <b>Methods:</b> We applied SemNet 2.0, constructed from over 35 million PubMed abstracts, to analyze disease and syndrome (DSYN) and pharmacological substance (PHSU) nodes. Nodes were ranked using HeteSim and mapped to a harmonized 13-category mechanistic ontology. We quantified pairwise disease intersections, ontology-level enrichment, rank similarity, and intersection-disease alignment, and constructed an integrated multimorbidity priority landscape integrating disease-specific and intersection-level hierarchies. <b>Results:</b> Across AD, ALS, and FTD, a convergent multimorbidity architecture centered on a shared metabolic and immune core was identified, accompanied by prominent neurobehavioral processes and intermediate systems including gastrointestinal, endocrine, hematological, hepatic, and sensory pathways. Disease-specific signatures shaped distinct vulnerability profiles within this shared structure, including cardiovascular enrichment in AD, neuromuscular and toxin-related pathways in ALS, and coupled neurobehavioral-metabolic features in FTD. PHSU patterns reinforced these findings, with centrally positioned compounds predominantly targeting inflammatory, metabolic, or neuromodulatory processes. <b>Conclusions:</b> These findings position AD, ALS, and FTD within a unified, AI-derived multimorbidity framework. This ontology-guided approach provides a computational, hypothesis-generating foundation for multimorbidity-aware biomarker discovery, risk stratification, and cross-disease therapeutic exploration in neurodegenerative disease.
Authors
- Cassie S. Mitchell
- Jennifer Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5239-5653)
- Benjamin Zhao
- Zihan Wei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1734-3643)
- David Camacho
- Xin He
- Meghna R. Iyer
Institutions
- Brigham Young University (US)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Emory University (US)
- Atlanta Technical College (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Biomedicines
- Published
- 2026-02-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines14020444
- Primary Topic
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00