Browsing by Author "Baez, Pablo"

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    Amerindian ancestry proportion as a risk factor for inflammatory bowel diseases: results from a Latin American Andean cohort
    (2023) Pérez Jeldres, Tamara De Lourdes; Magne, Fabien; Ascui, Gabriel; Alvares, Danilo; Orellana, Matias; Álvarez Lobos Manuel Marcelo; Hernández Rocha, Cristián Antonio; Azocar, Lorena; Aguilar, Nataly; Espino, Alberto; Estela, Ricardo; Escobar, Sergio; Zazueta, Alejandra; Baez, Pablo; Silva, Veronica; de la Vega, Andres; Arriagada, Elizabeth; Pávez Ovalle, Carolina Denisse; Diaz-Asencio, Alejandro; Travisany, Dante; Miquel Poblete, Juan Francisco; Villablanca, Eduardo J.; Kronenberg, Mitchell; Bustamante, Maria Leonor
    Background and aimsLatin American populations remain underrepresented in genetic studies of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). Most genetic association studies of IBD rely on Caucasian, African, and Asian individuals. These associations have yet to be evaluated in detail in the Andean region of South America. We explored the contribution of IBD-reported genetic risk variants to a Chilean cohort and the ancestry contribution to IBD in this cohort.MethodsA total of 192 Chilean IBD patients were genotyped using Illumina's Global Screening Array. Genotype data were combined with similar information from 3,147 Chilean controls. The proportions of Aymara, African, European, and Mapuche ancestries were estimated using the software ADMIXTURE. We calculated the odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for gender, age, and ancestry proportions. We also explored associations with previously reported IBD-risk variants independently and in conjunction with genetic ancestry.ResultsThe first and third quartiles of the proportion of Mapuche ancestry in IBD patients were 24.7 and 34.2%, respectively, and the corresponding OR was 2.30 (95%CI 1.52-3.48) for the lowest vs. the highest group. Only one variant (rs7210086) of the 180 reported IBD-risk SNPs was associated with IBD risk in the Chilean cohort (adjusted P = 0.01). This variant is related to myeloid cells.ConclusionThe type and proportion of Native American ancestry in Chileans seem to be associated with IBD risk. Variants associated with IBD risk in this Andean region were related to myeloid cells and the innate immune response.
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    Entity normalization in a Spanish medical corpus using a UMLS-based lexicon: findings and limitations
    (2024) Baez, Pablo; Campillos-Llanos, Leonardo; Nunez, Fredy; Dunstan, Jocelyn
    Entity normalization is a common strategy to resolve ambiguities by mapping all the synonym mentions to a single concept identifier in standard terminology. Normalizing medical entities is challenging, especially for languages other than English, where lexical variation is considerably under-represented. Here, we report a new linguistic resource for medical entity normalization in Spanish. We applied a UMLS-based medical lexicon (MedLexSp) to automatically normalize mentions from 2000 medical referrals of the Chilean Waiting List Corpus. Three medical students manually revised the automatic normalization. The inter-coder agreement was computed, and the distribution of concepts, errors, and linguistic sources of variation was analyzed. The automatic method normalized 52% of the mentions, compared to 91% after manual revision. The lowest agreement between automatic and automatic-manual normalization was observed for Finding, Disease, and Procedure entities. Errors in normalization were associated with ortho-typographic, semantic, and grammatical linguistic inadequacies, mainly of the hyponymy/hyperonymy, polysemy/metonymy, and acronym-abbreviation types. This new resource can enrich dictionaries and lexicons with new mentions to improve the functioning of modern entity normalization methods. The linguistic analysis offers insight into the sources of lexical variety in the Spanish clinical environment related to error generation using lexicon-based normalization methods. This article also introduces a workflow that can serve as a benchmark for comparison in studies replicating our analysis in Romance languages.
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    Ethnicity influences phenotype and clinical outcomes: Comparing a South American with a North American inflammatory bowel disease cohort
    (2022) Perez-Jeldres, Tamara; Pizarro, Benjamin; Ascui, Gabriel; Orellana, Matias; Cerda-Villablanca, Mauricio; Alvares, Danilo; de la Vega, Andres; Cannistra, Macarena; Cornejo, Barbara; Baez, Pablo; Silva, Veronica; Arriagada, Elizabeth; Rivera-Nieves, Jesus; Estela, Ricardo; Hernandez-Rocha, Cristian; alvarez-Lobos, Manuel; Tobar, Felipe
    Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn disease (CD), has emerged as a global disease with an increasing incidence in developing and newly industrialized regions such as South America. This global rise offers the opportunity to explore the differences and similarities in disease presentation and outcomes across different genetic backgrounds and geographic locations. Our study includes 265 IBD patients. We performed an exploratory analysis of the databases of Chilean and North American IBD patients to compare the clinical phenotypes between the cohorts. We employed an unsupervised machine-learning approach using principal component analysis, uniform manifold approximation, and projection, among others, for each disease. Finally, we predicted the cohort (North American vs Chilean) using a random forest. Several unsupervised machine learning methods have separated the 2 main groups, supporting the differences between North American and Chilean patients with each disease. The variables that explained the loadings of the clinical metadata on the principal components were related to the therapies and disease extension/location at diagnosis. Our random forest models were trained for cohort classification based on clinical characteristics, obtaining high accuracy (0.86 = UC; 0.79 = CD). Similarly, variables related to therapy and disease extension/location had a high Gini index. Similarly, univariate analysis showed a later CD age at diagnosis in Chilean IBD patients (37 vs 24; P = .005). Our study suggests a clinical difference between North American and Chilean IBD patients: later CD age at diagnosis with a predominantly less aggressive phenotype (39% vs 54% B1) and more limited disease, despite fewer biological therapies being used in Chile for both diseases.
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    Genome sequencing reveals molecular subgroups in oral epithelial dysplasia
    (2023) Marquez, Agustin; Mujica, Isidora; Jordan, Natalia; Baez, Pablo; Tarquinio, Sandra; Nunes, Jean; Adorno, Daniela; Martinez, Benjamin; Morales-Pison, Sebastian; Fernandez-Ramires, Ricardo
    This study aimed to analyze the molecular characteristics of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED), highlighting the pathways and variants of genes that are frequently mutated in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and other cancers. Ten archival OED cases were retrieved for retrospective clinicopathological analysis and exome sequencing. Comparative genomic analysis was performed between high-grade dysplasia (HGD) and low-grade dysplasia (LGD), focusing on 57 well-known cancer genes, of which 10 were previously described as the most mutated in OSCC. HGD cases had significantly more variants; however, a similar mutational landscape to OSCC was observed in both groups. CASP8+FAT1/ HRAS, TP53, and miscellaneous molecular signatures were also present. FAT1 is the gene that is most affected by pathogenic variants. Hierarchical divisive clustering showed division between the two groups: "HGD-like cluster" with 4HGD and 2LGD and "LGD-like cluster" with 4 LGD. MLL4 pathogenic variants were exclusively in the "LGD-like cluster". TP53 was affected in one case of HGD; however, its pathway was usually altered. We describe new insights into the genetic basis of epithelial malignant transformation by genomic analysis, highlighting those associated with FAT1 and TP53. Some LGDs presented a similar mutational landscape to HGD after cluster analysis. Perhaps molecular alterations have not yet been reflected in histomorphology. The relative risk of malignant transformation in this molecular subgroup should be addressed in future studies.
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    Genotype Prevalence of Lactose Deficiency, Vitamin D Deficiency, and the Vitamin D Receptor in a Chilean Inflammatory Bowel Disease Cohort: Insights from an Observational Study
    (MDPI, 2023) Pérez Jeldres, Tamara De Lourdes; Bustamante, M. Leonor; Segovia-Melero, Roberto; Aguilar, Nataly; Magne, Fabien; Ascui, Gabriel; Uribe, Denisse; Azocar, Lorena; Hernández Rocha, Cristián Antonio; Estela, Ricardo; Silva, Veronica; De La Vega, Andres; Arriagada, Elizabeth; Gonzalez, Mauricio; Onetto, Gian-Franco; Escobar, Sergio; Baez, Pablo; Zazueta, Alejandra; Pávez Ovalle Carolina Denisse; Miquel Poblete, Juan Francisco; Álvarez Lobos Manuel Marcelo
    Lactose intolerance (LI) and vitamin D deficiency (VDD) have been linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We conducted an observational study in 192 Chilean IBD patients to investigate the prevalence of a specific gene variant (LCT-13910 CC genotype) associated with LI and the prevalence of VDD/Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) gene variants. Blood samples were analyzed using Illumina's Infinium Global Screening Array. The LCT-13910 CC genotype was found in 61% of IBD patients, similar to Chilean Hispanic controls and lower than Chilean Amerindian controls. The frequency of the LCT-13910-C allele in Chilean IBD patients (0.79) was comparable to the general population and higher than Europeans (0.49). Regarding VDR and VDD variants, in our study, the rs12785878-GG variant was associated with an increased risk of IBD (OR = 2.64, CI = 1.61-4.32; p-value = 0.001). Sixty-one percent of the Chilean IBD cohort have a genetic predisposition to lactose malabsorption, and a significant proportion exhibit genetic variants associated with VDD/VDR. Screening for LI and VDD is crucial in this Latin American IBD population.
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    Response to Kempf et al on Methodological and Practical Aspects of a Distant Metastasis Detection Model
    (American Society of Clinical Oncology, 2024) Ahumada, Ricardo; Dunstan Escudero, Jocelyn Mariel; Paredes, Inti; Baez, Pablo