Social Media as a Sensor: Analyzing Twitter Data for Breast Cancer Medication Effects Using Natural Language Processing

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Kobara, Seibi, Rafiei, Alireza, Nateghi, Masoud, Bozkurt, Selen, Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan, Sarker, Abeed
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Kobara, Seibi
Rafiei, Alireza
Nateghi, Masoud
Bozkurt, Selen
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Sarker, Abeed
author_facet Kobara, Seibi
Rafiei, Alireza
Nateghi, Masoud
Bozkurt, Selen
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Sarker, Abeed
contents Breast cancer is a significant public health concern and is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women. Despite advances in breast cancer treatments, medication non-adherence remains a major problem. As electronic health records do not typically capture patient-reported outcomes that may reveal information about medication-related experiences, social media presents an attractive resource for enhancing our understanding of the patients' treatment experiences. In this paper, we developed natural language processing (NLP) based methodologies to study information posted by an automatically curated breast cancer cohort from social media. We employed a transformer-based classifier to identify breast cancer patients/survivors on X (Twitter) based on their self-reported information, and we collected longitudinal data from their profiles. We then designed a multi-layer rule-based model to develop a breast cancer therapy-associated side effect lexicon and detect patterns of medication usage and associated side effects among breast cancer patients. 1,454,637 posts were available from 583,962 unique users, of which 62,042 were detected as breast cancer members using our transformer-based model. 198 cohort members mentioned breast cancer medications with tamoxifen as the most common. Our side effect lexicon identified well-known side effects of hormone and chemotherapy. Furthermore, it discovered a subject feeling towards cancer and medications, which may suggest a pre-clinical phase of side effects or emotional distress. This analysis highlighted not only the utility of NLP techniques in unstructured social media data to identify self-reported breast cancer posts, medication usage patterns, and treatment side effects but also the richness of social data on such clinical questions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00821
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Social Media as a Sensor: Analyzing Twitter Data for Breast Cancer Medication Effects Using Natural Language Processing
Kobara, Seibi
Rafiei, Alireza
Nateghi, Masoud
Bozkurt, Selen
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Sarker, Abeed
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
Breast cancer is a significant public health concern and is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women. Despite advances in breast cancer treatments, medication non-adherence remains a major problem. As electronic health records do not typically capture patient-reported outcomes that may reveal information about medication-related experiences, social media presents an attractive resource for enhancing our understanding of the patients' treatment experiences. In this paper, we developed natural language processing (NLP) based methodologies to study information posted by an automatically curated breast cancer cohort from social media. We employed a transformer-based classifier to identify breast cancer patients/survivors on X (Twitter) based on their self-reported information, and we collected longitudinal data from their profiles. We then designed a multi-layer rule-based model to develop a breast cancer therapy-associated side effect lexicon and detect patterns of medication usage and associated side effects among breast cancer patients. 1,454,637 posts were available from 583,962 unique users, of which 62,042 were detected as breast cancer members using our transformer-based model. 198 cohort members mentioned breast cancer medications with tamoxifen as the most common. Our side effect lexicon identified well-known side effects of hormone and chemotherapy. Furthermore, it discovered a subject feeling towards cancer and medications, which may suggest a pre-clinical phase of side effects or emotional distress. This analysis highlighted not only the utility of NLP techniques in unstructured social media data to identify self-reported breast cancer posts, medication usage patterns, and treatment side effects but also the richness of social data on such clinical questions.
title Social Media as a Sensor: Analyzing Twitter Data for Breast Cancer Medication Effects Using Natural Language Processing
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00821