A brand new synthetic intelligence evaluation of 1000’s of posts from the favored on-line dialogue discussion board Reddit reveals that vapers are involved about e-cigarettes’ potential affect on every thing from their respiratory, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular methods to their psychological and sexual well being and sleep patterns. In addition they fear about the potential for dependancy, most cancers, and dental issues.
“Our purpose is to make clear how the general public, of their pure conversations, describe well being issues related to vaping e-cigarettes,” stated Alexandra DeLucia, a doctoral candidate in pc science at Johns Hopkins College’s Whiting College of Engineering.
DeLucia was a part of a multi-institution staff that performed the analysis as a part of the JHU’s Heart of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation. The staff included colleagues from the FDA’s Heart for Tobacco Merchandise, or CTP.
“The FDA CTP’s mission is to guard People from tobacco-related ailments and dying,” DeLucia stated. “Our hope is that listening to what ‘actual voices’ are saying will considerably improve understanding of how individuals take into consideration e-cigarettes.”
The researchers consider this data has the potential to tell new, simpler public well being analysis and media campaigns by leveraging the voices and experiences of odd individuals who use e-cigarettes.
DeLucia labored on the evaluation with Mark Dredze, an affiliate professor of pc science at Johns Hopkins and director of analysis (foundations of AI) on the college’s AI-X Foundry; Adam Poliak, an assistant professor of pc science at Bryn Mawr Faculty; and John W. Ayers, affiliate adjunct professor of medication at College of California San Diego.
To seek out detailed discussions about e-cigarettes, the staff turned to Reddit, with its 55 million each day customers and about 10 million each day posts. Reddit was most well-liked over Twitter and different social media platforms due to its lengthy, conversational format.
“Tweets are nice for studying what eating places somebody went to final evening or what political celebration they assist,” DeLucia stated, “however in terms of complicated points, we want richer knowledge that goes past Twitter’s social media character limits. Reddit offers us that.”
As well as, Reddit conversations are conveniently organized into smaller communities known as “subreddits,” permitting the researchers to determine conversations associated to vaping and to trust that the conversations being analyzed had been related. To additional focus their knowledge, the staff included solely dialogue threads and posts that contained the phrase “does ____ trigger,” DeLucia stated.
“That allowed us to seize questions similar to ‘Does e-juice trigger X’ or ‘Does vaping trigger X?'” she stated.
“What we discovered was that folks posting in dialogue threads about e-cigarette use on Reddit primarily describe respiratory, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular issues,” DeLucia stated. “Much less-cited issues had been neurological, dermatology, oral well being, and sexual well being. Moreover, psychiatry, oncologic, dependancy, and sleep issues had been raised by posters.”
Subsequent steps for this analysis embrace making use of this methodology to further Reddit communities to find perceived well being outcomes of different merchandise.
DeLucia and the staff offered their findings on the annual assembly of the Society for Analysis on Nicotine and Tobacco, held in early March in San Antonio.
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Reddit customers involved by well being dangers of vaping, in line with AI evaluation (2023, Might 15)
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