Figure 1

Study design and disease networks. (A) Strategy for the identification of diseases and genetic factors influencing multimorbidity. Network nodes and edges correspond to diseases and relative risks (RRs), respectively, and were constructed using primary health records from the Catalan general population. The human figures were created by Freepik. (B) Distributions of the number of nodes and edges in each main network component across strata and by gender. (C) Exponential decay of cumulative degree (k) distributions of two example disease networks as depicted. (D) Proportions of linked ICD-10 codes that share a clinical chapter; box-plots show the results of 1,000 permutations and the observed value for each stratum network is indicated by a dot. (E) Number of diseases with causal genes/proteins included in the molecular network that revealed at least one disease association with a smaller shortest path than expected at random. The ordered bars indicate the number of disease associations that match this criterion for each disease (ICD-10 codes are indicated on the x-axis). The gray zone indicates diseases that do not match the criterion. A prevalence threshold is also depicted.