English tweets on allergy: Content analysis and association with surveillance data

Autores da FMUP

• Bernardo Manuel De Sousa Pinto

  Autor

• Rafael José Monteiro Da Silva Vieira

  Autor

Participantes de fora da FMUP

• Jankin, Slava
• Marques-Cruz, Manuel
• Fonseca, Joao Almeida
• Bousquet, Jean

Unidades de investigação

• Laboratório Associado RISE- Rede de Investigação em Saúde

  

  Investigador

  Fernando Carlos De Landér Schmitt

• Medicina da Comunidade, Informação e Decisão em Saúde

• RISE-Health

  

  Investigador

  Fernando Carlos De Landér Schmitt

Abstract

BackgroundAnalysis of X (formerly Twitter) posts can inform on the interest/perceptions that social media users have on health subjects. In this study, we aimed to analyse tweets on allergic conditions, comparing them with surveillance data.MethodsWe retrieved tweets from England on ``allergy,'' ``asthma,'' and ``allergic rhinitis,'' published between 2016 and 2021. We estimated the correlation between the frequency of tweets on ``asthma'' and ``allergic rhinitis'' and English surveillance data on the incidence of asthma and allergic rhinitis medical visits. We performed sentiment analysis, computing a score informing on the emotional tone of assessed tweets. We applied a topic modelling approach to identify topics (clusters of words frequently occurring together) for tweets on each assessed condition.ResultsWe analysed a total of 13,605 tweets on ``allergy,'' 7767 tweets on ``asthma,'' and 11,974 tweets on ``allergic rhinitis.'' Food-related words were preponderant on tweets on ``allergy,'' while ``eyes'' was the most frequent meaningful word on ``allergy rhinitis'' tweets. We observed seasonal patterns for tweets on ``allergic rhinitis,'' both in their frequency and sentiment - the incidence of allergic rhinitis medical visits was moderately to strongly correlated with the frequency (rho = 0.866) and sentiment (rho = -0.474) of tweets on ``allergic rhinitis.'' For tweets on ``asthma,'' no such patterns/correlations were observed. The average sentiment score was negative for all assessed conditions, ranging from -0.004 (''asthma'') to -0.083 (''allergic rhinitis'').ConclusionsTweets on ``allergic rhinitis'' displayed a seasonal pattern regarding their frequency and sentiment, which correlated with surveillance data. No such patterns were observed for ``asthma.''

© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

• allergic rhinitis; asthma; surveillance; twitter