Objective:To investigate the changes and characteristics of human brucellosis epidemic in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ningxia), and provide reference for development of brucellosis prevention and control measures in the future.Methods:The data of reported cases of brucellosis in Ningxia in 2022 and 2023 were collected from the "Infectious Disease Reporting Information Management System of China Disease Prevention and Control Information System". Descriptive epidemiological methods were used to compare and analyze the epidemic data.Results:A total of 10 891 cases of human brucellosis were reported in Ningxia in 2022 and 2023, with an average annual incidence rate of 74.94/100 000, and no death cases. The incidence rate of brucellosis decreased from 86.76/100 000 in 2022 to 63.17/100 000 in 2023, with a statistically significant difference (χ 2 = 269.96, P < 0.001). In 2022 and 2023, 22 counties (cities, districts) in Ningxia had reported brucellosis cases, and the incidence rate of brucellosis in each county (city, district) had decreased by 7.88% to 58.43%. There were reports of brucellosis cases in every month of the year. The incidence rates of brucellosis in males were higher than those in females (χ 2 = 831.79, 715.24, P < 0.001). There were statistically significant differences in incidence rates among different age groups (χ 2 = 2 113.28, 1 455.83, P < 0.001), the age distribution were mainly concentrated in the 45 - 59 year old age group [41.62% (2 618/6 290), 41.84% (1 925/4 601)]. The occupational distribution were mainly dominated by farmers and herdsmen [88.71% (5 580/6 290), 89.52% (4 119/4 601)]. Compared with those in 2022, the incidence rates of brucellosis in males and females and all age groups in 2023 were significantly lower (χ 2 = 163.23, 108.56, 14.83, 27.10, 106.81, 110.89, 37.22, P < 0.001). The outbreak of brucellosis had decreased from 6 cases in 2022 to 1 case in 2023. Conclusions:In 2023, the incidence rate of human brucellosis in Ningxia is significantly decreased compared to 2022, the epidemic still affects various regions, with cases occurring in every month of the year. The affected population is mainly male, middle-aged, and farmers and herdsmen.

Objective:To compare the degranulation levels of basophils in peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) and granulocyte populations between healthy subjects and patients with sepsis, and to explore the underlying mechanisms. Additionally, plasma cytokine levels were measured in these volunteers.Methods:Peripheral blood samples were collected from both healthy individuals and sepsis patients. The degranulation level of basophils in sepsis patients and its potential mechanisms were examined. Plasma levels of IL-1β, IL-9, and IL-10 were detected, and Pearson correlation analysis was performed to assess the relationship between degranulated basophils in the granulocyte population and IL-9 levels.Results:Compared with healthy subjects, sepsis patients showed a reduction in basophil percentages within PBMC and granulocyte populations by 94.8% and 37.9%, respectively ( Z = -6.441, P < 0.05; Z = -2.681, P < 0.05). In contrast, both the proportion and number of degranulated basophils in the granulocyte population were increased (both P < 0.05). Plasma levels of IL-1β, IL-9, and IL-10 were significantly elevated in sepsis patients--by 80.6%, 36.7%, and 11.9-fold, respectively ( Z = -4.258, P < 0.05; Z = -3.606, P < 0.05; Z = -4.814, P < 0.05). Moreover, plasma IL-9 levels were highly correlated with both the percentage and count of degranulated basophils in the granulocyte population (both P < 0.05). GO and KEGG enrichment analyses revealed cytological changes and potential mechanisms involving basophils in the PBMC of sepsis patients. Conclusions:The decreased total count of basophils in sepsis patients may elevate the risk of secondary infection. Degranulated basophils in the granulocyte population may contribute to excessive inflammatory responses through IL-9 secretion.

BACKGROUND: Over 20 million colonoscopies are performed in China annually. An automatic clinical decision support system (CDSS) with accurate semantic recognition of colonoscopy reports and guideline-based is helpful to relieve the increasing medical burden and standardize the healthcare. In this study, the CDSS was built under a hierarchical-label interpretable classification framework, trained by a state-of-the-art transformer-based model, and validated in a multi-center style. METHODS: We conducted stratified sampling on a previously established dataset containing 302,965 electronic colonoscopy reports with pathology, identified 2041 patients' records representative of overall features, and randomly divided into the training and testing sets (7:3). A total of five main labels and 22 sublabels were applied to annotate each record on a network platform, and the data were trained respectively by three pre-training models on Chinese corpus website, including bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT)-base-Chinese (BC), the BERT-wwm-ext-Chinese (BWEC), and ernie-3.0-base-zh (E3BZ). The performance of trained models was subsequently compared with a randomly initialized model, and the preferred model was selected. Model fine-tuning was applied to further enhance the capacity. The system was validated in five other hospitals with 3177 consecutive colonoscopy cases. RESULTS: The E3BZ pre-trained model exhibited the best performance, with a 90.18% accuracy and a 69.14% Macro-F1 score overall. The model achieved 100% accuracy in identifying cancer cases and 99.16% for normal cases. In external validation, the model exhibited favorable consistency and good performance among five hospitals. CONCLUSIONS The novel CDSS possesses high-level semantic recognition of colonoscopy reports, provides appropriate recommendations, and holds the potential to be a powerful tool for physicians and patients. The hierarchical multi-label strategy and pre-training method should be amendable to manage more medical text in the future.
Humans ; Colonoscopy/methods* ; Deep Learning ; Decision Support Systems, Clinical ; Female ; Male

This article briefly introduces the new concept of burnout and the new burnout assessment tool BAT. In the past, the most famous burnout definition was proposed by Maslach and Leiter. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) developed by Maslach has also been the gold standard for evaluating burnout. With the development of burnout research, the concept of burnout has a certain defect. MBI has also been criticized in conceptual, practical and psychological measurement. It may hinder new research, and urgently needs to improve the concept and evaluation of burnout. Therefore, Schaufeli redefined the concept of burnout, and developed a new burnout assessment tool for groups and individuals based on the new concept of burnout-Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) . This paper systematically reviews the proposal of the new concept of burnout, the development of the BAT scale and its application at home and abroad, and analyzes the advantages and application prospects of the BAT scale.

Objective:To verify the reliability and validity of the short version of the Chinese version of the new Burnout Assessment Tool (12 items version of Burnout Assessment Tool, BAT-12) .Methods:From October to December 2023, the cluster sampling method was adopted, and the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) and the BAT-12 scale were used simultaneously. A questionnaire survey was conducted among enterprise employees (4329 people) in Shanghai and Guangdong Province. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and other methods were employed to analyze its reliability (internal consistency reliability and combination reliability) and validity (structural validity, convergent validity, discriminative validity and criterion validity) .Results:A total of 4329 questionnaires were retrieved, among which 4086 were valid, with an effective recovery rate of 94.39%. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the Chinese version of the BAT-12 total scale was 0.956, and the combination reliability coefficients of each dimension ranged from 0.914 to 0.952. The scale contained 12 items, and 4 common factors were extracted from exploratory factor analysis, including exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment. The cumulative variance contribution rate reached 86.63%. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that both the four-factor correlation model and the second-order model were ideally fitted overall, with the four-factor correlation model having the best data fit (comparative fit index 0.972, Tuker-Lewis fit index 0.962, root mean square error of approximation 0.064, and standardized root mean square residual 0.033). The average variance extracted (AVE) of each dimension of the scale ranged from 0.780 to 0.868, and the square roots of AVE (0.883 to 0.932) were all greater than their Pearson correlation coefficients (0.630 to 0.850). The Pearson correlation coefficient between BAT-12 and MBI-GS was 0.787 ( P<0.001) . Conclusion:The Chinese version of the BAT-12 scale demonstrates strong internal consistency and combination reliability, with excellent reliability. Its four-dimensional structure validity has been validated, with good convergent validity, discriminative validity, and ideal criterion validity, demonstrating excellent validity. The Chinese version of the BAT-12 scale can be used to measure the level of occupational burnout among Chinese employees.

Objective:To investigate the effect of left colonic artery (LCA) preservation on rectal cancer patients' short-term postoperative anal function and quality of life.Methods:Two-hundred ninty-two patients with rectal cancer at the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery of Peking University First Hospital between Jan 2022 and Dec 2023 were enrolled . The patients were divided into two groups according to whether the LCA was preserved during surgery or not. The LARS scale and EORTC QLQ-CR29 quality of life questionnaire were used to assess postoperative anal function and quality of life.Results:There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of the amount of surgical blood loss and the number of lymph node dissections in the root No. 253 group and the time to postoperative voiding (all P>0.05). However, the LARS scores at 1 and 3 months postoperatively were significantly lower in the preserved LCA group than in the LCA nonpreserved group, especially for gas incontinence, loose stool leakage, and number of bowel movements (all P<0.05). The EORTC QLQ-CR29 scores showed that the LCA preserved group recovered significantly better than the non-preserved group in terms of postoperative voiding dysfunction ( P=0.007), urinary incontinence ( P=0.006), mucus discharge ( P=0.009), and fecal incontinence symptoms ( P<0.001). Male sexual dysfunction recovery was quicker in the preserved LCA group ( P=0.043), but there was no significant difference between the two groups at 3 months postoperatively( P>0.05). Conclusion:Preservation of the left colonic artery in low anterior resection of rectal cancer helps to reduce the incidence of postoperative low anterior resection syndrome, improve genitourinary symptoms, and improve patients' quality of life.

Objective:Analyze the risk factors of gastrointestinal perforation caused by foreign body and summarize the experience of surgical treatment of foreign bodies.Method:From Jan 2008 to Dec 2023, 89 patients with foreign bodies in the digestive tract were admitted to the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Peking University First Hospital. Relevant data were collected and binary logistic regression was used to analyze the independent risk factors for intestinal perforation, resection and anastomosis of intestine or enterostomy/colostomy.Results:The mean age of 89 patients was (60.1±16.2) years old, 65 patients (73%) had unintentionally ingested foreign bodies. The most common foreign bodies were jujube pits (40 cases). Thirty-nine patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal perforation. Binary Logistic regression analysis showed that the total number of leukocytes ( OR=4.085, 95% CI: 1.214-13.745, P=0.023), sharp foreign body ( OR=26.124, 95% CI: 5.194-131.392, P<0.001), and the location of foreign body ( OR=3.980, 95% CI: 1.178-13.465, P=0.026) were the independent risk factors for gastrointestinal perforation. Thirty-three patients underwent gastrointestinal repair surgery, and 36 patients underwent resection and anastomosis of intestine or enterostomy/colostomy. Binary Logistic regression analysis showed that the foreign body located in the colorectum ( OR=71.928, 95% CI: 4.646-1 113.479, P=0.002) and the length of the foreign body ≤2.5 cm ( OR=5.791, 95% CI: 1.606-20.882, P=0.007) were the independent risk factors for resection and anastomosis of intestine or enterostomy/colostomy. Conclusions:Leukocyte count ≥10×10 9/L, sharp foreign body, and location of foreign body are independent risk factors for gastrointestinal perforation. Foreign body located in the colorectum and foreign body length ≤2.5 cm are risk factors for resection and anastomosis of intestine or enterostomy/colostomy.

This article briefly introduces the new concept of burnout and the new burnout assessment tool BAT. In the past, the most famous burnout definition was proposed by Maslach and Leiter. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) developed by Maslach has also been the gold standard for evaluating burnout. With the development of burnout research, the concept of burnout has a certain defect. MBI has also been criticized in conceptual, practical and psychological measurement. It may hinder new research, and urgently needs to improve the concept and evaluation of burnout. Therefore, Schaufeli redefined the concept of burnout, and developed a new burnout assessment tool for groups and individuals based on the new concept of burnout-Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) . This paper systematically reviews the proposal of the new concept of burnout, the development of the BAT scale and its application at home and abroad, and analyzes the advantages and application prospects of the BAT scale.

Objective:To verify the reliability and validity of the short version of the Chinese version of the new Burnout Assessment Tool (12 items version of Burnout Assessment Tool, BAT-12) .Methods:From October to December 2023, the cluster sampling method was adopted, and the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) and the BAT-12 scale were used simultaneously. A questionnaire survey was conducted among enterprise employees (4329 people) in Shanghai and Guangdong Province. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and other methods were employed to analyze its reliability (internal consistency reliability and combination reliability) and validity (structural validity, convergent validity, discriminative validity and criterion validity) .Results:A total of 4329 questionnaires were retrieved, among which 4086 were valid, with an effective recovery rate of 94.39%. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the Chinese version of the BAT-12 total scale was 0.956, and the combination reliability coefficients of each dimension ranged from 0.914 to 0.952. The scale contained 12 items, and 4 common factors were extracted from exploratory factor analysis, including exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment. The cumulative variance contribution rate reached 86.63%. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that both the four-factor correlation model and the second-order model were ideally fitted overall, with the four-factor correlation model having the best data fit (comparative fit index 0.972, Tuker-Lewis fit index 0.962, root mean square error of approximation 0.064, and standardized root mean square residual 0.033). The average variance extracted (AVE) of each dimension of the scale ranged from 0.780 to 0.868, and the square roots of AVE (0.883 to 0.932) were all greater than their Pearson correlation coefficients (0.630 to 0.850). The Pearson correlation coefficient between BAT-12 and MBI-GS was 0.787 ( P<0.001) . Conclusion:The Chinese version of the BAT-12 scale demonstrates strong internal consistency and combination reliability, with excellent reliability. Its four-dimensional structure validity has been validated, with good convergent validity, discriminative validity, and ideal criterion validity, demonstrating excellent validity. The Chinese version of the BAT-12 scale can be used to measure the level of occupational burnout among Chinese employees.

Objective:To investigate the changes and characteristics of human brucellosis epidemic in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ningxia), and provide reference for development of brucellosis prevention and control measures in the future.Methods:The data of reported cases of brucellosis in Ningxia in 2022 and 2023 were collected from the "Infectious Disease Reporting Information Management System of China Disease Prevention and Control Information System". Descriptive epidemiological methods were used to compare and analyze the epidemic data.Results:A total of 10 891 cases of human brucellosis were reported in Ningxia in 2022 and 2023, with an average annual incidence rate of 74.94/100 000, and no death cases. The incidence rate of brucellosis decreased from 86.76/100 000 in 2022 to 63.17/100 000 in 2023, with a statistically significant difference (χ 2 = 269.96, P < 0.001). In 2022 and 2023, 22 counties (cities, districts) in Ningxia had reported brucellosis cases, and the incidence rate of brucellosis in each county (city, district) had decreased by 7.88% to 58.43%. There were reports of brucellosis cases in every month of the year. The incidence rates of brucellosis in males were higher than those in females (χ 2 = 831.79, 715.24, P < 0.001). There were statistically significant differences in incidence rates among different age groups (χ 2 = 2 113.28, 1 455.83, P < 0.001), the age distribution were mainly concentrated in the 45 - 59 year old age group [41.62% (2 618/6 290), 41.84% (1 925/4 601)]. The occupational distribution were mainly dominated by farmers and herdsmen [88.71% (5 580/6 290), 89.52% (4 119/4 601)]. Compared with those in 2022, the incidence rates of brucellosis in males and females and all age groups in 2023 were significantly lower (χ 2 = 163.23, 108.56, 14.83, 27.10, 106.81, 110.89, 37.22, P < 0.001). The outbreak of brucellosis had decreased from 6 cases in 2022 to 1 case in 2023. Conclusions:In 2023, the incidence rate of human brucellosis in Ningxia is significantly decreased compared to 2022, the epidemic still affects various regions, with cases occurring in every month of the year. The affected population is mainly male, middle-aged, and farmers and herdsmen.