JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Opioids are used for the treatment of refractory pain, but their inappropriate use has detrimental consequences for health. Analyzing the level of awareness that the population has of it is relevant.

Objective:

To identify health-related discussions in Twitter posts mentioning opioids and analyze the content within these posts.

Methods:

In this cross-sectional study, we collected public tweets about major opioids posted in English or Spanish between January 1st and December 31st 2020. A total of 256,218 tweets were collected, of which 69,222 were discarded. Subsequently, 7,000 tweets were analyzed manually according to a codebook created by the researchers. The remaining databases were then analyzed using machine learning classifiers. The number of posts by each user type identified and the categories identified by analyzing the content.

Results:

Among all the drugs studied, fentanyl was the most discussed, being mentioned in 27% of the tweets. Regarding the type of user, approximately 70% were identified as patients. However, tweets posted by healthcare professionals generated the highest number of retweets. In terms of content, non-medical topics prevailed. The most frequently discussed non-medical topics were related to legal aspects and recreational use, while the most frequent medical topic was efficacy, which was considered poor or null in over 90% of the cases.

Conclusions:

This study provided a good understanding of public perceptions of opioids. Furthermore, these data can help design public health communication aimed to raise awareness among the population about the risks associated with excessive opioid use. Both healthcare providers and the general public must be aware of these risks to minimize opioid use as much as possible.