Spadaro Anthony, Hairston JaMor, Lakamana Sahithi, Wightman Rachel, Love Jennifer, Perrone Jeanmarie, Sarker Abeed
Department of Emergency Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, 140 Bergen St, Newark, NJ, 07103, United States, 1 973-972-2977.
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States.
JMIR Dermatol. 2025 Sep 12;8:e70329. doi: 10.2196/70329.
Xylazine has been associated with skin wounds. The rising prevalence of xylazine and its debated role in wound causation have sparked concerns among public health professionals, medical experts, and people who use drugs.
This study used a qualitative evaluation of Reddit posts to understand the experiences of people who use drugs concerning xylazine-associated wounds.
This study explored xylazine discussions on Reddit. Data were collected from 930+ drug-related subreddits via the PRAW Python application programming interface, and natural language processing methods were employed to identify posts that mentioned xylazine and wound-related keywords. Retrieved posts were manually coded for thematic analysis, and a term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis was performed per theme to obtain additional insights.
The manual classification of 286 posts revealed predominant themes related to the pathophysiology of xylazine, wound locations on the body, and management strategies. The 3 most frequent xylazine wound-related themes were "Mechanisms of xylazine-associated wounds" (84 posts, 29.4%), "Geographic region" (67, 23.4%), and "Location of wounds on the body" (56, 19.6%). The analysis showed xylazine's presence in the discussions among Reddit's drug-using communities, with a notable focus on wound management and geographic trends. The term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis revealed prominent lexical markers within each theme.
The findings suggest that social media platforms such as Reddit can serve as valuable resources for understanding emerging health issues such as xylazine-associated wounds. The study's findings highlight patterns of use, the characteristics of wounds on people who use drugs, and discussions about wound management. This study adds to a growing body of literature using social media to understand the consequences of emerging drugs on human health.
赛拉嗪与皮肤伤口有关。赛拉嗪的使用日益普遍，其在伤口形成中所起的作用也存在争议，这引发了公共卫生专业人员、医学专家以及吸毒者的担忧。
本研究通过对Reddit帖子进行定性评估，以了解吸毒者与赛拉嗪相关伤口有关的经历。
本研究探讨了Reddit上关于赛拉嗪的讨论。通过PRAW Python应用程序编程接口从930多个与毒品相关的子版块收集数据，并采用自然语言处理方法识别提及赛拉嗪和伤口相关关键词的帖子。对检索到的帖子进行人工编码以进行主题分析，并对每个主题进行词频逆文档频率分析以获得更多见解。
对286篇帖子的人工分类揭示了与赛拉嗪的病理生理学、身体伤口位置和管理策略相关的主要主题。与赛拉嗪伤口相关的3个最常见主题是“赛拉嗪相关伤口的机制”（84篇帖子，29.4%）、“地理区域”（67篇，23.4%）和“身体上伤口的位置”（56篇，19.6%）。分析表明赛拉嗪在Reddit吸毒社区的讨论中存在，特别关注伤口管理和地理趋势。词频逆文档频率分析揭示了每个主题内突出的词汇标记。
研究结果表明，Reddit等社交媒体平台可作为了解赛拉嗪相关伤口等新出现的健康问题的宝贵资源。该研究的结果突出了使用模式、吸毒者伤口的特征以及关于伤口管理的讨论。本研究增加了利用社交媒体了解新型毒品对人类健康影响的文献。
