Neglected Tropical Disease Ontology
The Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a set of diseases which persist in exactly the physical, psychosocial and economic
situation of the poorest, most marginalized populations of the developing world. Most NTDs diseases are chronic diseases which
are related to poverty as a promoter of parasitic, bacterial, and also viral or fungal infections. Although of major healthcare
impact in developing and threshold countries NTDs are still seen as a rare event in developed countries.
In the main target countries of Latin America, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the distribution of NTD is controlled by climatic
conditions like Temperature (15 ° C and 40 ° C), humidity and altitude (below 2200 meters). In these regions, most of the
population (around 2.7 billion people) lives on the basis of about $ 2.00 per day. This population is considered the poorest in
the world, and is also listed as most vulnerable to NTDs.
Among the NTDs, the vector-borne diseases (Dengue fever, Leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, American Trypanosomiasis, African
Trypanosomiasis, Lymphatic Filariasis, Yellow Fever, among others) have resulted in a high level of mortality in poorer regions.
These infections persist for a long time and can cause severe disability and disfigurement, resulting in fundamental economic,
social and political burden. Some of these diseases affect developed countries as well.
Envisioning the maintenance of health quality through health policy efforts, ontologies could play an important role in the
management of information processed by health systems. If data in Clinical Information Systems and health databases
would be standardized via ontologies data mining and even secondary data usage would be easier. Ontologically accessed data
is integratively queryable and hence easy to compare. In particular such formalized data, if grouped, could produce new
epidemiological information, to help in decision-making process. As keys challenges for infectious disease management the
World Health Organization indicated an urgent need for diagnostic tools, new more effective medicines and pesticides, and
the promotion of integrated vector management.
A prerequisite in the fight against vector-borne diseases it has recently been recognized that efforts are needed to facilitate
the access to epidemiological knowledge about these diseases in a structured way. Controlled terminologies supported by
ontologies help the user to systematically use this knowledge and permit large scale automated analysis approaches like logical
and rule-based machine reasoning. At this level our effort concentrates on the most important point for vector-borne disease
control is the transmission path, as it drives prevention strategies and decision support. It is also important to have an integration with tools to
improve health policy related outcomes.
Contact us
Researchers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NTDO Files - OWL DL
The Neglected Tropical Disease Ontology (NTDO) is under active development. Here you can find links to download all developed content, like the NTDO and Subsets OWL files,
a semiautomatic TBOX Generator - usefull to generate disease classes, related to their pathogens, vectors, hosts and geographic locations.
Also, "TBOX Leishmaniasis Genereted test subset" classes were used to direct transform tabular information into OWL DL.
"TBox Generated Leishmaniasis Ontology - ISMB2011 - Full Classes" has the main leishmaniasis classes, provided by literature, related to their transmission patterns
in South America and a few countries of Central America.
"TBox Generated Leishmaniasis Ontology - ISMB2011 - Test File" is an additional file which was used to test the generated leishmaniasis through a set of specified competency questions, and
For additional information, visit see in Publications, the Bioinformatics 2011 paper.
NTDO and Subsets
ICD-10 OWL File - Portuguese Version
Geographic Locations (Pernambuco Cities)- RCC8 based
TBox Generator Files
TBox Generated Leishmaniasis Ontology - ISMB2011 - Test File
TBox Generated Leishmaniasis Ontology - ISMB2011 - Full Classes
 |
 |