This webinar was the third session of the ‘Network Physiology: Mapping Physiological Networks in Health and Disease’ webinar series. This series also included webinars on Network Physiology: Overview, Network Physiology in Extreme Environments and Network Physiology in Liver Failure.

This event has now passed, so registration is now closed. You can watch the webinar recording below.

Watch the full webinar series playlist

Complex diseases arise from the interaction of multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Conventional methods have failed in unraveling the mechanisms of these diseases or identifying effective therapies. This highlights the intricate interactions between physiological organ systems, where changes in one subsystem can trigger a cascade leading to global system dysfunction. For instance, sleep-disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea, is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular, metabolic, and psychiatric disorders. Similarly, sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host response to systemic infection, often culminating in multiple organ failure. 

While our current understanding of the mechanisms underlying complex diseases is largely based on experimental models, network physiology offers a novel perspective. Instead of focusing on individual organs, it focuses on the interactions between them. Various measurable aspects of human physiology—such as heart rate, respiratory rate, capillary oxygen saturation, or blood biomarkers—can be conceptualized as “nodes”. Functional connections, or “edges,” between node pairs are formed when interactions occur, creating an overall physiological network that can also be weighted on the magnitude of interactions computed.  

In this webinar, we discussed the importance of an integrated approach to understanding the mechanisms of sleep-disordered breathing and sepsis. We also reviewed how novel network-based methods, such as entropy-based measures and parenclitic networks, have been used to quantify organ system connectivity in complex disorders. Specifically, we showcased the results of three recent studies that demonstrate the application of physiological network mapping in sleep-disordered breathing and sepsis. 

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Registration closes at 23:59 BST on Monday 31 March 2025.