School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Kelvin Grove, Queensland, Australia.
Viertel Cancer Research Centre, Cancer Council Queensland, Fortitude Valley, Queensland, Australia.
J Hum Nutr Diet. 2025 Feb;38(1):e13390. doi: 10.1111/jhn.13390.
Online forums are a key source of information about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for people affected by cancer, especially when information needs are not met in healthcare settings. This study therefore investigated nutrition-related CAM information seeking and sharing in online forums for people affected by cancer.
This study was conducted in a major online platform that hosts over 10 forums for people affected by cancer and has more than 10,000 registered users. A search strategy was applied to the forums to identify discussion threads with nutrition-related CAM information from January 2020 to December 2023. Content analysis was used to code the topic of, reason for, and source of nutrition-related CAM information sought or shared.
Of 121 threads retrieved, 40 eligible threads contained 155 instances of nutrition-related CAM information seeking or sharing across 86 posts authored by 54 unique users. Most (89%) instances were information sharing rather than seeking. Topics commonly shared included using food items for medicinal purposes (e.g., ginger to reduce nausea) (25%), other sources of nutrition-related CAM information (e.g., book or naturopath) (17%), and oral nutrition supplements (16%). Most common reasons for sharing nutrition-related CAM information were strategies to manage treatment side effects (52%) and as complementary treatment (22%). Information shared was mostly sourced from personal opinion (44%) or experience (33%).
Information sharing about nutrition-related CAM is relatively common in online forums for people affected by cancer. Healthcare professionals should facilitate access to evidence-based information and advise caution when interpreting information shared in forums.
在线论坛是癌症患者获取补充和替代医学（CAM）信息的主要来源之一，尤其是当他们在医疗保健环境中无法满足信息需求时。因此，本研究调查了癌症患者在线论坛中与营养相关的 CAM 信息寻求和分享情况。
本研究在一个主要的在线平台上进行，该平台上有 10 多个针对癌症患者的论坛，拥有超过 10,000 名注册用户。应用搜索策略在论坛上搜索了 2020 年 1 月至 2023 年 12 月期间与营养相关的 CAM 信息的讨论主题。使用内容分析法对寻求或分享的营养相关 CAM 信息的主题、原因和来源进行编码。
在检索到的 121 个主题中，40 个符合条件的主题包含了 155 个涉及营养相关 CAM 信息寻求或分享的实例，涉及 86 个帖子，由 54 位不同用户撰写。大多数（89%）实例是信息分享而非寻求。分享的主题通常包括使用食物来治疗疾病（例如，生姜来缓解恶心）（25%）、其他营养相关 CAM 信息来源（例如，书籍或自然疗法医生）（17%）和口服营养补充剂（16%）。分享营养相关 CAM 信息的最常见原因是管理治疗副作用的策略（52%）和作为补充治疗（22%）。分享的信息主要来自个人意见（44%）或经验（33%）。
癌症患者在在线论坛中分享与营养相关的 CAM 信息较为普遍。医疗保健专业人员应促进获取基于证据的信息，并在解释论坛上分享的信息时提醒谨慎。
