Describing the breakbone fever: IDODEN, an ontology for dengue fever.

Elvira Mitraka,Emmanuel Dialynas,Pantelis Topalis,Christos Louis,Vicky Dritsou,Rebekah Crockett Kading

doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0003479

Abstract

BackgroundOntologies represent powerful tools in information technology because they enhance interoperability and facilitate, among other things, the construction of optimized search engines. To address the need to expand the toolbox available for the control and prevention of vector-borne diseases we embarked on the construction of specific ontologies. We present here IDODEN, an ontology that describes dengue fever, one of the globally most important diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe constructed IDODEN using open source software, and modeled it on IDOMAL, the malaria ontology developed previously. IDODEN covers all aspects of dengue fever, such as disease biology, epidemiology and clinical features. Moreover, it covers all facets of dengue entomology. IDODEN, which is freely available, can now be used for the annotation of dengue-related data and, in addition to its use for modeling, it can be utilized for the construction of other dedicated IT tools such as decision support systems.Conclusions/SignificanceThe availability of the dengue ontology will enable databases hosting dengue-associated data and decision-support systems for that disease to perform most efficiently and to link their own data to those stored in other independent repositories, in an architecture- and software-independent manner.

Highlights

Dengue fever is a viral vector-borne disease, limiting the spread of which relies, directly or indirectly, on the control of the vectors that transmit it [1]
Given the approach chosen, almost half of the imported terms have been taken from IDOMAL, while ChEBI [21], Gene Ontology (GO) [11, 12], MIRO [27] and the Environment Ontology ENVO [39] follow in that order
We have taken care to keep IDODEN updated since the release of its alpha version, which was made available in November 2012

Summary

Introduction

Dengue fever is a viral vector-borne disease, limiting the spread of which relies, directly or indirectly, on the control of the vectors that transmit it [1]. Usage of ontologies was only recently adopted to act as specific IT tools in the field of life sciences. This methodology has been shown to be exploited for efficient searches of databases, for modeling and, if widely adopted by a relevant research community, to achieve enhanced interoperability of IT resources. The complete definitions, listing of synonyms, additional information pertaining to terms (e.g. cross-references) and in particular the usage of defined relations linking terms, renders the use of ontologies the tool of choice for driving complicated databases. Ontologies represent powerful tools in information technology because they enhance interoperability and facilitate, among other things, the construction of optimized search engines. We present here IDODEN, an ontology that describes dengue fever, one of the globally most important diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes

Methods

Results

Conclusion