Ramagopalan Sreeram, Wasiak Radek, Cox Andrew P
Evidera, London, W6 8DL, UK.
F1000Res. 2014 Sep 10;3:216. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.5263.1. eCollection 2014.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common complex disorder, with new treatment options emerging each year. Social media is being increasingly used to investigate opinions about drugs, diseases and procedures. In this descriptive exploratory study, we sought to investigate opinions about currently available MS treatments.
The Twitter resource Topsy was searched for tweets mentioning the following MS treatments: Aubagio, Avonex, Betaferon or Betaseron, Copaxone, Extavia, Gilenya, Lemtrada, Novantrone, Rebif, Tysabri and Tecfidera between 1 Jan 2006 to 31 Jul 2014. Tweets were normalised and sentiment analysis performed.
In total, there were 60037 unique tweets mentioning an MS treatment. About half of the tweets contained non-neutral sentiment. Mean sentiment scores were different for treatments ranging from -0.191to 0.282 when investigating all tweets. These differences in sentiment scores between treatments were statistically significant (P<0.001). Sentiment scores tended to be higher for oral MS treatments than injectable treatments.
Many tweets about MS treatments have a non-neutral sentiment. The analysis of social media appears to be a potential avenue for exploring patient opinion about MS treatments.
多发性硬化症（MS）是一种常见的复杂疾病，每年都有新的治疗方案出现。社交媒体越来越多地被用于调查关于药物、疾病和治疗程序的观点。在这项描述性探索性研究中，我们试图调查对目前可用的MS治疗方法的看法。
在Twitter资源Topsy中搜索2006年1月1日至2014年7月31日期间提及以下MS治疗方法的推文：奥巴捷、阿沃尼单抗、β-干扰素或β-干扰素、考帕松、利比、格列宁、乐复能、米托蒽醌、利比、替罗非班和富马酸二甲酯。对推文进行标准化处理并进行情感分析。
总共60037条独特的推文提及了MS治疗方法。大约一半的推文包含非中性情感。在调查所有推文时，不同治疗方法的平均情感得分在-0.191至0.282之间。治疗方法之间情感得分的这些差异具有统计学意义（P<0.001）。口服MS治疗方法的情感得分往往高于注射治疗方法。
许多关于MS治疗方法的推文具有非中性情感。社交媒体分析似乎是探索患者对MS治疗方法看法的一个潜在途径。
