Roberti Roberta, Comacchio Carla, Colizzi Marco, Mallio Carlo Augusto, Russo Emilio, Di Gennaro Gianfranco
Department of Health Sciences, University of Catanzaro "Magna Græcia", Viale Europa, 88100 Catanzaro, Italy.
Unit of Psychiatry and Eating Disorders, Department of Medicine (DMED), University of Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy.
Curr Neuropharmacol. 2025;23(7):780-786. doi: 10.2174/011570159X333465241121184404.
Today more and more people search the web for health-related information, risking to come across misinformation and biased content that may affect their treatment decisions. Cannabidiol (CBD) is among the products for which beneficial effects have been claimed, often at the expense of the risks; further keeping in mind unreliable information reported on products themselves.
This study evaluated the quality of information retrieved by Google on the potential effects of CBD on weight management, also comparing Italian and English contents, hypothesizing generally low quality and language-driven differences in offered information.
Queries regarding cannabidiol and obesity-related terms were entered into Google, ranking the first 50 webpages from both merged Italian and English results for analysis.
Of the outputs, 37 Italian and 27 English websites addressed the topic and were not related to medical literature. As expected, a substantial proportion of information was of low quality, with English sites performing better (29.6%) than Italian ones (54%, p = 0.052) in terms of "JAMA benchmarks" for trustworthiness of information. Also, while most English sites were "Health portals" (40.7%) with neutral stance toward CBD (74.1%), Italian ones were predominantly "commercial" (78.4%, p = 0.001) and promoting CBD use (89.2%, p < 0.001).
Findings suggest the need for better online information, especially in non-Englishspeaking countries, as scarce and unequal information can lead people to make poor health choices, with potentially harmful consequences.
如今，越来越多的人在网上搜索与健康相关的信息，他们有可能接触到错误信息和有偏见的内容，而这些可能会影响他们的治疗决策。大麻二酚（CBD）是一种声称具有有益效果的产品，人们往往忽视其风险；此外，产品本身所报道的信息也不可靠。
本研究评估了谷歌搜索到的关于CBD对体重管理潜在影响的信息质量，同时比较了意大利语和英语内容，推测所提供信息的质量普遍较低且存在语言驱动的差异。
将关于大麻二酚和肥胖相关术语的查询输入谷歌，对合并后的意大利语和英语结果中的前50个网页进行排名分析。
在输出结果中，有37个意大利语网站和27个英语网站涉及该主题且与医学文献无关。正如预期的那样，大部分信息质量较低，就信息可信度的“《美国医学会杂志》基准”而言，英语网站（29.6%）的表现优于意大利语网站（54%，p = 0.052）。此外，虽然大多数英语网站是“健康门户网站”（40.7%），对CBD持中立态度（74.1%），但意大利语网站主要是“商业性的”（78.4%，p = 0.001），并宣传CBD的使用（89.2%，p < 0.001）。
研究结果表明需要更好的在线信息，尤其是在非英语国家，因为稀缺且不平等 的信息可能会导致人们做出糟糕的健康选择，从而产生潜在的有害后果。
