Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42517104›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in public health2026

Identification of hidden subtypes in occupational health examinations and their biomedical characteristics using graph-enhanced deep representation learning.

Zhaoli Wang, Xuhui Chen, Wei Xiang, Ying Wang, Yang Sun, Yan Pan, Chunhuo Zhang, Yu Ye

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Article in Frontiers in public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Zhaoli WangDepartment of Labor and Health, China Railway Harbin Group Co., Ltd., Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Xuhui ChenDepartment of Labor and Health, China Railway Harbin Group Co., Ltd., Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Wei XiangHarbin Railway Disease Prevention and Control Center, China Railway Harbin Group Co., Ltd., Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Ying WangHarbin Railway Disease Prevention and Control Center, China Railway Harbin Group Co., Ltd., Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Yang SunHeilongjiang Provincial Geriatric Hospital, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Yan PanSchool of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Chunhuo ZhangHeilongjiang Provincial Health Commission, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Yu YeHarbin Railway Disease Prevention and Control Center, China Railway Harbin Group Co., Ltd., Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Purpose: Occupational health examinations have long relied on conventional health classes to assess worker health status. However, individuals within the same examination class may differ substantially in risk sources, pathophysiological background, and potential progression patterns. This study aimed to determine whether stable hidden health subtypes exist beyond conventional occupational health classifications in a large real-world cohort and to evaluate the utility of graph-enhanced deep representation learning for subtype discovery and biomedical interpretation. Methods: We included 63,988 occupational health examination records collected from five organizational units between 2022 and 2025. A standardized master dataset was constructed by harmonizing anthropometric measures, blood pressure, glucose metabolism, lipid metabolism, liver function, kidney function, inflammatory markers, and vascular-related indicators. We first established a benchmark panel including conventional statistical models, tree-based models, and neural network models. We then developed a domain-aware prototype tabular network (DAPTN) and its graph-enhanced variant (Graph-DAPTN) to learn individual-level latent health representations, prototype distances, and hidden subtype structure. The identified subtypes were further interpreted in terms of clinical abnormality burden, risk gradients, temporal drift, and cross-domain stability. Results: The cohort exhibited substantial heterogeneity across units and years, as well as strong coupling among biomedical indicators. Linear models showed limited performance in capturing complex occupational health phenotypes, whereas nonlinear models performed better overall. In subtype-discovery validation, Graph-DAPTN showed stronger cluster separation and class-subtype concordance than several conventional baselines. Based on this representation, six clinically interpretable hidden subtypes were identified beyond conventional health classes: resilient-healthy, hepato-inflammatory, uric-metabolic, gluco-lipotoxic, hypertensive-homocysteine, and ageing-vascular. These subtypes showed distinct abnormality spectra in glucose and lipid metabolism, blood pressure, liver enzymes, uric acid, homocysteine, and inflammatory burden, and their distributions varied across years and organizational units. Conclusion: Conventional health classes in occupational health examinations do not fully capture the underlying heterogeneity of worker health status. Graph-enhanced deep representation learning can improve health-state modeling while identifying clinically meaningful hidden subtypes beneath routine classification. These findings may support more refined risk stratification, key-population screening, and unit-level health intervention planning in occupational health practice.

Indexed as

Deep LearningHealth StatusOccupational HealthFemaleHumansMaleRepresentation Machine Learningdeep learninggraph neural networkhealth examinationhidden subtypeoccupational healthreal-world datarisk stratification

Identifiers

PMID42517104
PMCPMC13402512

What Socratic holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.