Twitter As a Noninvasive Bio-Marker for Trends in Liver Disease

Digital Marketing: A Unique Multidisciplinary Approach towards the Elimination of Viral Hepatitis

New technologies are supported by the global implementation of the internet. These improvements have deeply affected various disciplines of sciences and consequently changed services such as daily business, particularly health sectors. Innovative digital marketing strategies utilize the channels of social media and retrieved user data to analyze and improve relevant services. These multidisciplinary innovations can assist specialists, physicians and researchers in diagnostic, prophylaxis and treatment issues in the health sector. Accordingly, compared to recent decades, health decision makers are more accurate and trustful in defining new strategies. Interestingly, using social media and mobile health apps in current pandemics of SARS-CoV-2 could be an important instance of the key role of these platforms at the local and global level of health policies. These digital technologies provide platforms to connect public health sectors and health politicians for communicating and spreading relevant information. Adding influencers and campaigns to this toolbox strengthens the implementation of public health programs. In 2016, the WHO adopted a global program to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030. Recent constructive measures that have been used in the battle against COVID-19 could be adopted for the elimination of viral hepatitis program. The presented evidence in our narrative review demonstrates that the application of digital marketing tools to create campaigns on social media, armed with professional influencers, can efficiently consolidate this program. The application of different strategies in using these popular tools will raise the public awareness about viral hepatitis. Subsequently, the availability of an effective vaccine for HBV and antiviral medication for HCV can motivate the audience to take steps towards prophylaxis and screening methods against these infectious illnesses. The encouragement of health policy makers to apply digital communication technologies and comprehensive roadmaps to implement this global program will certainly decrease the burden of viral hepatitis worldwide.

A Twitter discourse analysis of negative feelings and stigma related to NAFLD, NASH and obesity

BACKGROUND

People with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are stigmatized, partly since 'non-alcoholic' is in the name, but also because of obesity, which is a common condition in this group. Stigma is pervasive in social media and can contribute to poorer health outcomes. We examine how stigma and negative feelings concerning NAFLD/NASH and obesity manifest on Twitter.

METHODS

Using a self-developed search terms index, we collected NAFLD/NASH tweets from May to October 2019 (Phase I). Because stigmatizing NAFLD/NASH tweets were limited, Phase II focused on obesity (November-December 2019). Via sentiment analysis, >5000 tweets were annotated as positive, neutral or negative and used to train machine learning-based Natural Language Processing software, applied to 193 747 randomly sampled tweets. All tweets collected were analysed.

RESULTS

In Phase I, 16 835 tweets for NAFLD and 2376 for NASH were retrieved. Of the annotated NAFLD/NASH tweets, 97/1130 (8.6%) and 63/535 (11.8%), respectively, related to obesity and 13/1130 (1.2%) and 5/535 (0.9%), to stigma; they primarily focused on scientific discourse and unverified information. Of the 193 747 non-annotated obesity tweets (Phase II), the algorithm classified 40.0% as related to obesity, of which 85.2% were negative, 1.0% positive and 13.7% neutral.

CONCLUSIONS

NAFLD/NASH tweets mostly indicated an unmet information need and showed no clear signs of stigma. However, the negative content of obesity tweets was recurrent. As obesity-related stigma is associated with reduced care engagement and lifestyle modification, the main NAFLD/NASH treatment, stigma-reducing interventions in social media should be included in the liver health agenda.