Analysis of Answers to Queries among Anonymous Users with Gastroenterological Problems on an Internet Forum

Web-based and machine learning approaches for identification of patient-reported outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease

BACKGROUND

Messages from an Internet forum are raw material that emerges in a natural setting (i.e., non-induced by a research situation).

AIMS

The FLARE-IBD project aimed at using an innovative approach consisting of collecting messages posted by patients in an Internet forum and conducting a machine-learning study (data analysis/language processing) for developing a patient-reported outcome measuring flare in inflammatory bowel disease meeting international requirements.

METHODS

We used web-based and machine learning approaches, in the following steps. 1) Web-scraping to collect all available posts in an Internet forum (23 656 messages) and extracting metadata from the forum. 2) Twenty patients were randomly assigned 50 extracted messages; participants indicated whether the message corresponded or not to the flare phenomenon (labeling). If yes, participants were asked to identify excerpts from the text they considered significant flare markers (annotation). 3) The set of annotated messages underwent a vocabulary analysis.

RESULTS

The phenomenon of flare was circumscribed with the identification of 20 surrogate flare markers classified into five dimensions with their frequency within extracted labeled data: impact on life, symptoms, extra-intestinal manifestations, drugs and environmental factors. Web-based and machine-learning approaches met international recommendations to inform the content and structure for the development of patient-reported outcomes.

Mild Adverse Events of Sputnik V Vaccine in Russia: Social Media Content Analysis of Telegram via Deep Learning

Background

There is a limited amount of data on the safety profile of the COVID-19 vector vaccine Gam-COVID-Vac (Sputnik V). Previous infodemiology studies showed that social media discourse could be analyzed to assess the most concerning adverse events (AE) caused by drugs.

Objective

We aimed to investigate mild AEs of Sputnik V based on a participatory trial conducted on Telegram in the Russian language. We compared AEs extracted from Telegram with other limited databases on Sputnik V and other COVID-19 vaccines. We explored symptom co-occurrence patterns and determined how counts of administered doses, age, gender, and sequence of shots could confound the reporting of AEs.

Methods

We collected a unique dataset consisting of 11,515 self-reported Sputnik V vaccine AEs posted on the Telegram group, and we utilized natural language processing methods to extract AEs. Specifically, we performed multilabel classifications using the deep neural language model Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) “DeepPavlov,” which was pretrained on a Russian language corpus and applied to the Telegram messages. The resulting area under the curve score was 0.991. We chose symptom classes that represented the following AEs: fever, pain, chills, fatigue, nausea/vomiting, headache, insomnia, lymph node enlargement, erythema, pruritus, swelling, and diarrhea.

Results

Telegram users complained mostly about pain (5461/11,515, 47.43%), fever (5363/11,515, 46.57%), fatigue (3862/11,515, 33.54%), and headache (2855/11,515, 24.79%). Women reported more AEs than men (1.2-fold, P<.001). In addition, there were more AEs from the first dose than from the second dose (1.1-fold, P<.001), and the number of AEs decreased with age (β=.05 per year, P<.001). The results also showed that Sputnik V AEs were more similar to other vector vaccines (132 units) than with messenger RNA vaccines (241 units) according to the average Euclidean distance between the vectors of AE frequencies. Elderly Telegram users reported significantly more (5.6-fold on average) systemic AEs than their peers, according to the results of the phase 3 clinical trials published in The Lancet. However, the AEs reported in Telegram posts were consistent (Pearson correlation r=0.94, P=.02) with those reported in the Argentinian postmarketing AE registry.

Conclusions

After the Sputnik V vaccination, Russian Telegram users reported mostly pain, fever, and fatigue. The Sputnik V AE profile was comparable with other vector COVID-19 vaccines. Discussion on social media could provide meaningful information about the AE profile of novel vaccines.

Usage of eHealth/mHealth Services among Young Czech Adults and the Impact of COVID-19: An Explorative Survey

Various mHealth/eHealth services play an increasingly important role in healthcare systems and personal lifestyle management. Yet, the relative popularity of these services among the young population of the Czech Republic was not known. Therefore, we carried out an on-line survey with a convenience sample (n = 299) of young adults aged 18–29 and living in the Czech Republic. To this end, we adapted the survey instrument which was previously used in a similar study conducted in a different cultural context (Hong Kong). In our study, we found out that health tutorial activities (i.e., acquiring information on diet, exercise, fitness) were the most common among our respondents (M = 2.81, SD = 1.14). These were followed by health information seeking activities (i.e., acquiring information on medical problems) (M = 2.63, SD = 0.89) and medical services (i.e., the eHealth/mHealth services that provide infrastructural support, such as ePrescription and doctor appointment organizers) (M = 2.18, SD = 0.97). Based on the grouping according to gender and existing health condition, pairwise comparisons showed statistically significant differences. We also briefly analyzed the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the examined activities. Based on their relative popularity, we suggest leveraging the potential of health tutorial activities to improve public health.

Characteristics of Websites Presenting Parenteral Supplementation Services in Five European Countries: A Cross-Sectional Study

We aimed to characterize the parenteral supplementation services in Czechia, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom based on their websites. We generated a list of websites by searching Google using the term “vitamin infusion” and selected cities with 250,000 citizens from each analyzed country. All search inputs were performed using the native language. Data on the features of services, indications, contraindications, offered parenteral supplements, and social media activity were obtained. We analyzed 317 websites representing 371 active facilities. Only 6 (1.9%) facilities cited the scientific sources on parenteral supplementation, but these reference were highly biased; 17.4% did not provide information regarding their personnel, while 11.9% indicated the different contraindications. The most common indications were fatigue (62.5%), immunity enhancement (58.0%), anti-aging, and physical activity (51.5%). Approximately, 11.6% of facilities claimed that some parenteral supplements can help manage certain malignancies, while 2.2% claimed that they can help manage fertility problems. The most offered intravenous supplements were vitamins C (57.4%), B12 (47.7%), and B6 (42.3%). The parenteral supplementation market offers numerous ingredients as treatment for general health problems and serious health conditions. Many analyzed websites lacked essential information, which creates concerns for regarding the quality and reliability of the services.