Patient-Reported Reasons for Switching or Discontinuing Statin Therapy: A Mixed Methods Study Using Social Media.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Statin discontinuation can have major negative health consequences. Studying the reasons for discontinuation can be challenging as traditional data collection methods have limitations. We propose an alternative approach using social media.

Methods

We used natural language processing and machine learning to extract mentions of discontinuation of statin therapy from an online health forum, WebMD ( http://www.webmd.com ). We then extracted data according to themes and identified key attributes of the people posting for themselves.

Results

We identified 2121 statin reviews that contained information on discontinuing at least one named statin. Sixty percent of people posting declared themselves as female and the most common age category was 55-64 years. Over h

SUBMITTER: Golder S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9402720 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature