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Commercial Online Social Network Data and Statin Side-Effect Surveillance: A Pilot Observational Study of Aggregate Mentions on Facebook

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Abstract

Introduction

Surveillance of the safety of prescribed drugs after marketing approval has been secured remains fraught with complications. Formal ascertainment by providers and reporting to adverse-event registries, formal surveys by manufacturers, and mining of electronic medical records are all well-known approaches with varying degrees of difficulty, cost, and success. Novel approaches may be a useful adjunct, especially approaches that mine or sample internet-based methods such as online social networks.

Methods

A novel commercial software-as-a-service data-mining product supplied by Sysomos from Datasift/Facebook was used to mine all mentions on Facebook of statins and stain-related side effects in the US in the 1-month period 9 January 2017 through 8 February 2017.

Results

A total of 4.3% of all 25,700 mentions of statins also mentioned typical stain-related side effects. Multiple methodological weaknesses stymie interpretation of this percentage, which is however not inconsistent with estimates that 5–20% of patients taking statins will experience typical side effects at some time.

Conclusions

Future work on pharmacovigilance may be informed by this novel commercial tool, but the inability to mine the full text of a posting poses serious challenges to content categorization.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiology Research, Center for Optimizing Radiology Value (CORVA), Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA, USA

    Marco D. Huesch

  2. Department of Radiology, Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA

    Marco D. Huesch

Authors
  1. Marco D. Huesch
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Correspondence to Marco D. Huesch.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Approval

This study used data that was completely de-identified and aggregated, and, accordingly, did not represent human subjects research and did not require IRB determination or approval in our institution.

Funding

No direct funding; unrestricted research allowance.

Conflicts of interest

Marco D. Huesch declares that he has no conflicts of interest that are directly relevant to the content of this study.

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Huesch, M.D. Commercial Online Social Network Data and Statin Side-Effect Surveillance: A Pilot Observational Study of Aggregate Mentions on Facebook. Drug Saf 40, 1199–1204 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40264-017-0577-3

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