Abstract

Agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) is a commonly used unsupervised machine learning approach for identifying informative natural clusters of observations. HCA is performed by calculating a pairwise dissimilarity matrix and then clustering similar observations until all observations are grouped within a cluster. Verifying the empirical clusters produced by HCA is complex and not well studied in biomedical applications. Here, we demonstrate the comparability of a novel HCA technique with one that was used in previous biomedical applications while applying both techniques to plasma angiogenic (FGF, FLT, PIGF, Tie-2, VEGF, VEGF-D) and inflammatory (MMP1, MMP3, MMP9, IL8, TNFα) protein data to identify informative subsets of individuals. Study subjects were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment due to cerebrovascular disease (MCI-CVD). Through comparison of the two HCA techniques, we were able to identify subsets of individuals, based on differences in VEGF (p < 0.001), MMP1 (p < 0.001), and IL8 (p < 0.001) levels. These profiles provide novel insights into angiogenic and inflammatory pathologies that may contribute to VCID.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-6-2020

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, v. 14, article 84, p. 1-10.

© 2020 Winder, Sudduth, Fardo, Cheng, Goldstein, Nelson, Schmitt, Jicha and Wilcock.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00084

Funding Information

The authors gratefully acknowledge the NIH [NINR: 4R01NR014189-05 (GJ), NIA: 5UH2NS100606-02 (DW and GJ), NCATS: UL1TR001998, NIA: 5P30AG028383].

Related Content

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00084/full#supplementary-material It is also available as the additional file listed at the end of this record.

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