Age-specific Disease Network for the Major Diseases

J Health Info Stat > Volume 38(1); 2013 > Article

J Health Info Stat 2013;38(1):66-81.

한국인의 주요 질병에 대한 연령별 네트워크 분석

김홍석 , 이태림

Age-specific Disease Network for the Major Diseases

Hong Seok Kim , Tae Rim Lee

ABSTRACT

Objectives:
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship among major diseases in Korea by social network analysis and word cloud. Differences across three age groups are also studied.
Methods:
We used social network analysis to draw a network graph for describing the relationships among the diseases. We got data on relationships among the diseases by a literature search and obtained the prevalence rate and the mortality of such diseases from 2011 Korean National Health Nutrition Examination Survey and causes of death statistics in Korea.
Results:
We find that smoking and obesity is the most important factor of causing other diseases. Except obesity, anemia, hepatitis, atopic dermatitis and some other diseases, most diseases become more common and more dangerous across the older age group. We can visually recognize these results from the graphs made by social network analysis and wordle.
Conclusions:
We made the age-specific social network graphs between 24 major diseases in Korea across three age groups. We could know most disease became more and more prevalent and severe with people being older.

Key words: Social network analysis, Disease network, Korean disease network Word-cloud, Wordle