AI evaluation of Reddit reveals public curiosity in GLP-1 medication for weight reduction and psychological well being advantages

In a latest examine printed within the journal Communications Drugs, researchers in america of America (US) used giant language fashions (LLMs) to research over 391,000 distinctive discussions on Reddit, a social media platform, associated to glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs). The examine revealed excessive curiosity in GLP-1 RAs, with discussions specializing in weight reduction experiences, negative effects, entry points, and optimistic psychological advantages, with largely neutral-to-positive sentiment.

Examine: Utilizing giant language fashions to evaluate public perceptions round glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists on social media. Picture Credit score: Caroline Ruda/  Shutterstock

Background

Greater than 38% of the world’s inhabitants is chubby or overweight, projected to succeed in 51% by 2035. Weight problems is understood to extend the danger of cardiometabolic illnesses and all-cause mortality considerably. GLP-1 RAs are medication that imitate the operate of pure GLP-1, a hormone within the gut that controls glucose metabolism and emotions of fullness. Whereas this class of medicine was initially authorised for sort 2 diabetes, it has just lately gained world consideration for cardiovascular danger discount and weight reduction in sufferers with weight problems, regardless of the presence of diabetes. Nevertheless, public views on GLP-1 RAs, essential for remedy uptake and adherence, haven’t been totally explored.

Social media platforms like Reddit supply anonymized public conversations on well being subjects, revealing real-world experiences typically missed in scientific settings or trials. Whereas manually analyzing giant volumes of this knowledge is resource-intensive, its evaluation could be expedited utilizing synthetic intelligence methods similar to LLMs. Subsequently, researchers within the current examine employed LLMs to research over 390,000 Reddit discussions on GLP-1 RAs, figuring out subjects similar to weight reduction, negative effects, and considerations. They aimed to watch negative effects, gauge public sentiment, and information future analysis and public well being initiatives utilizing the findings.

In regards to the examine

Reddit hosts consumer discussions within the type of posts and feedback. It’s organized into publicly accessible, topic-specific communities known as “subreddits.” GLP-1 RA-related discussions had been curated by indexing Reddit content material primarily based on the generic and model names of GLP-1 RA medication, together with semaglutide. The dataset included 391,461 distinctive discussions (largely since 2021) from 116,216 authors, with 71,982 posts and 319,479 feedback.

A beforehand described “matter modeling” method was employed for evaluation, and numerous instruments and algorithms had been employed. Discussions are remodeled into numerical representations and clustered to determine subjects. Every matter was labeled and grouped primarily based on similarities in dialogue content material. This method aimed to extract key themes and insights from the in depth discussions on GLP-1 RAs obtainable on Reddit. Moreover, this examine employed a mannequin named “RoBERTa” (quick for Robustly Optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers Pre-training Method) to categorise sentiment. It used three possibilities (starting from 0 to 1) to find out the character of the sentiment throughout the textual content, labeled as “adverse, impartial, or optimistic sentiment.”

Outcomes and dialogue

About 97.1% of the discussions targeted on GLP-1 RA medicines prescribed for weight reduction, similar to semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide, with “Ozempic” being essentially the most mentioned (41.4%), regardless of not being authorised by the US Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. Solely 2.9% of discussions had been about GLP-1 RAs authorised solely for diabetes. The amount of discussions surged considerably after 2022, following the FDA approval of “Wegovy.”

The mannequin recognized 168 dialogue subjects, indicating excessive public curiosity, with a concentrate on experiences with the medication for weight reduction. The subjects included drug efficacy, comparability to different remedies, urge for food impression, and negative effects. Nausea was discovered to be essentially the most frequent aspect impact, adopted by vomiting, injection website points, constipation, pancreatitis, and gastroparesis. Additional, entry points, market shortages, insurance coverage protection, and the ethics of off-label use had been discovered to be mentioned. Optimistic results on motivation and psychological well being and the worth of avoiding bariatric surgical procedure had been additionally mentioned. Matters had been clustered into 33 teams, reflecting themes similar to comparisons with different remedies, negative effects, entry considerations, and psychological advantages. Sentiment evaluation revealed that 31.8% of discussions had been adverse, 50.1% had been impartial, and 17.4% had been optimistic. Notably, two subjects had been excluded attributable to unlawful content material associated to buying illicit substances.

Scatter plot exhibiting a 2D-projection of all dialogue embeddings, the place every level represents a dialogue. The overlying coloration represents the related group of that dialogue primarily based on the subject modeling. The x- and y-axes signify the 2 axes (Function 1, Function 2) onto which embeddings had been dimensionally lowered utilizing Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for visualization functions.

The examine is strengthened by its large-scale AI-based evaluation of social media discussions to uncover public perceptions and experiences with medication, providing insights past conventional scientific analysis. Nevertheless, the examine is proscribed by potential mislabeling attributable to spelling errors, lack of ability to confirm reported negative effects, restricted generalizability, and suboptimal common process benchmarks for LLM.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the examine analyzed large-scale GLP-1 RA-related discussions on social media utilizing LLMs. The findings reveal discussions centered on weight reduction experiences, aspect impact comparisons, entry points, and optimistic psychological advantages. This means excessive public curiosity in GLP-1 RAs and highlights priorities for scientific and coverage communities, together with monitoring negative effects, addressing entry limitations, and acknowledging each the bodily and psychological advantages of those medication.