Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 16, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 10, 2020
A Social Media Study on Associations of Flavored E-Cigarette with Health Symptoms: Observational Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
In recent years, flavored e-cigarettes have become popular among teenagers and young adults. However, the health risks associated with e-cigarettes especially different e-liquid flavors remain unclear.
Objective:
This study aimed to investigate the potential associations between e-liquid flavors and health symptoms using social media data.
Methods:
A dataset consisting of 2.8 million e-cigarette-related posts was collected using keyword filtering from one social media platform, Reddit, from January 2013 to April 2019. Temporal analysis for nine major health symptom categories was used to understand the trend of public concerns related to e-cigarettes. Topic modeling was applied to reveal the topics related to e-cigarettes and health symptoms. Furthermore, generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to quantitatively measure potential associations between e-liquid flavors and health symptoms.
Results:
Temporal analysis showed that the Respiratory category was consistently the most discussed health symptom category among all categories related to e-cigarettes on Reddit, followed by the Throat category. Although most categories were relatively stable over time, the Psychological category (mainly anxiety) showed a significant growth since June 2016, which was coincident with the growth trend of CBD oil mentions. Topic modelling conducted on all health-related posts showed that 17 of the top 100 topics were flavor-related. GEE models showed different associations between health symptoms and e-liquid flavor categories, for example, lower association of the Beverage flavors with Respiratory compared to other flavors, and higher association of the Fruit flavors with Cardiovascular than other flavors.
Conclusions:
This study identified different potential associations between e-liquid flavors and health symptoms using social media data. Results from this study provide valuable information for further investigation of health effects associated with different e-liquid flavors.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.