Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine, Emory University, GA, 30322, Atlanta, Georgia.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, GA, 30341, Atlanta, Georgia.
Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy. 2022 Mar 5;17(1):16. doi: 10.1186/s13011-022-00442-w.
Timely data from official sources regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people who use prescription and illegal opioids is lacking. We conducted a large-scale, natural language processing (NLP) analysis of conversations on opioid-related drug forums to better understand concerns among people who use opioids.
In this retrospective observational study, we analyzed posts from 14 opioid-related forums on the social network Reddit. We applied NLP to identify frequently mentioned substances and phrases, and grouped the phrases manually based on their contents into three broad key themes: (i) prescription and/or illegal opioid use; (ii) substance use disorder treatment access and care; and (iii) withdrawal. Phrases that were unmappable to any particular theme were discarded. We computed the frequencies of substance and theme mentions, and quantified their volumes over time. We compared changes in post volumes by key themes and substances between pre-COVID-19 (1/1/2019-2/29/2020) and COVID-19 (3/1/2020-11/30/2020) periods.
Seventy-seven thousand six hundred fifty-two and 119,168 posts were collected for the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods, respectively. By theme, posts about treatment and access to care increased by 300%, from 0.631 to 2.526 per 1000 posts between the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods. Conversations about withdrawal increased by 812% between the same periods (0.026 to 0.235 per 1,000 posts). Posts about drug use did not increase (0.219 to 0.218 per 1,000 posts). By substance, among medications for opioid use disorder, methadone had the largest increase in conversations (20.751 to 56.313 per 1,000 posts; 171.4% increase). Among other medications, posts about diphenhydramine exhibited the largest increase (0.341 to 0.927 per 1,000 posts; 171.8% increase).
Conversations on opioid-related forums among people who use opioids revealed increased concerns about treatment and access to care along with withdrawal following the emergence of COVID-19. Greater attention to social media data may help inform timely responses to the needs of people who use opioids during COVID-19.
目前缺乏关于 COVID-19 大流行对使用处方和非法阿片类药物的人的影响的官方来源的及时数据。我们对阿片类药物相关药物论坛上的对话进行了大规模的自然语言处理 (NLP) 分析，以更好地了解阿片类药物使用者的关注点。
在这项回顾性观察研究中，我们分析了社交网络 Reddit 上的 14 个阿片类相关论坛上的帖子。我们应用 NLP 来识别经常提到的物质和短语，并根据其内容手动将短语分为三个主要主题：(i) 处方和/或非法阿片类药物的使用；(ii) 物质使用障碍治疗的获取和护理；以及 (iii) 戒断。无法映射到任何特定主题的短语将被丢弃。我们计算了物质和主题提及的频率，并量化了它们随时间的变化。我们比较了 COVID-19 大流行前后（2019 年 1 月 1 日至 2 月 29 日和 2020 年 3 月 1 日至 11 月 30 日）关键主题和物质的帖子数量变化。
COVID-19 大流行前和大流行期间分别收集了 77652 和 119168 条帖子。按主题划分，关于治疗和获取护理的帖子增加了 300%，从 COVID-19 大流行前的每 1000 条帖子 0.631 条增加到 COVID-19 大流行期间的 2.526 条。同一时期，关于戒断的对话增加了 812%（每 1000 条帖子从 0.026 增加到 0.235）。关于药物使用的帖子没有增加（每 1000 条帖子 0.219 至 0.218）。就阿片类药物使用障碍的药物而言，美沙酮的讨论量增加最多（每 1000 条帖子增加 20751 至 56313 次；增加 171.4%）。在其他药物中，关于苯海拉明的帖子增幅最大（每 1000 条帖子从 0.341 增加到 0.927 次；增加 171.8%）。
在 COVID-19 出现后，阿片类药物相关论坛上阿片类药物使用者的对话显示出对治疗和获取护理以及戒断的担忧增加。更多关注社交媒体数据可能有助于及时了解 COVID-19 期间阿片类药物使用者的需求。
