Assessment of pathogenic pathways in the early development of asthma
SECONDARY
The secondary outcomes of the prospective cohort study will be assessed by an integrative omics approach. The high dimensional multi-omics data require advanced statistical analyses. We will use machine learning and multi-variate statistical approaches (such as elastic net and weighted gene co-expression network analysis) that have been proven successful in analysing complex, multilevel datasets. Also, mechanistic models that provide a detailed understanding of biological networks will be used. Such models (e.g. Recon2) provide a comprehensive ‘reconstruction’ of the human biology and can be used to infer causality by integrating several layers of information (e.g. gene expression, metabolomics, and microbiomics) [