English tweets on allergy: Content analysis and association with surveillance data

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2024

Authors

Sousa Pinto, B (Author) FMUP; Jankin, S (Author) Other; Vieira, RJ (Author) FMUP; Marques Cruz, M (Author) Other; Fonseca, JA (Author) Other; Bousquet, J (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Clinical and Experimental Allergy

ISSN: 0954-7894

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 1 Citation

Scopus - 1 Citation

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-010-7KS

DOI: 10.1111/cea.14479

Abstract (EN): BackgroundAnalysis of X (formerly Twitter) posts can inform on the interest/perceptions that social media users have on health subjects. In this study, we aimed to analyse tweets on allergic conditions, comparing them with surveillance data.MethodsWe retrieved tweets from England on allergy, asthma, and allergic rhinitis, published between 2016 and 2021. We estimated the correlation between the frequency of tweets on asthma and allergic rhinitis and English surveillance data on the incidence of asthma and allergic rhinitis medical visits. We performed sentiment analysis, computing a score informing on the emotional tone of assessed tweets. We applied a topic modelling approach to identify topics (clusters of words frequently occurring together) for tweets on each assessed condition.ResultsWe analysed a total of 13,605 tweets on allergy, 7767 tweets on asthma, and 11,974 tweets on allergic rhinitis. Food-related words were preponderant on tweets on allergy, while eyes was the most frequent meaningful word on allergy rhinitis tweets. We observed seasonal patterns for tweets on allergic rhinitis, both in their frequency and sentiment - the incidence of allergic rhinitis medical visits was moderately to strongly correlated with the frequency (rho = 0.866) and sentiment (rho = -0.474) of tweets on allergic rhinitis. For tweets on asthma, no such patterns/correlations were observed. The average sentiment score was negative for all assessed conditions, ranging from -0.004 (asthma) to -0.083 (allergic rhinitis).ConclusionsTweets on allergic rhinitis displayed a seasonal pattern regarding their frequency and sentiment, which correlated with surveillance data. No such patterns were observed for asthma.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 9