A Novel Machine-learning Model to Classify Schizophrenia Using Methylation Data Based on Gene Expression

Introduction: The recent advancement in artificial intelligence has compelled medical research to adapt the technologies. The abundance of molecular data and AI technology has helped in explaining various diseases, even cancers. Schizophrenia is a complex neuropsychological disease whose etiology is unknown. Several gene-wide association studies attempted to narrow down the cause of the disease but did not successfully point out the mechanism behind the disease. There are studies regarding the epigenetic changes in the schizophrenia disease condition, and a classification machine-learning model has been trained using the blood methylation data. Method: In this study, we have demonstrated a novel approach to elucidating the molecular cause of the disease. We used a two-step machine-learning approach to determine the causal molecular markers. By doing so, we developed classification models using both gene expression microarray and methylation microarray data. Result: Our models, because of our novel approach, achieved good classification accuracy with the available data size. We analyzed the important features, and they add up as evidence for the glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia. Conclusion: In this way, we have demonstrated explaining a disease through machine learning models.