ArticleDrug safety2022
Patient-Reported Reasons for Switching or Discontinuing Statin Therapy: A Mixed Methods Study Using Social Media.
Article in Drug safety, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Extracting and Classifying Drug Discontinuations From Estonian Electronic Health Records: Development and Validation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Beyond Cholesterol Lowering: Clinical Caution, Personalization, and Nutritional Integration in Statin Therapy.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Trends and inequalities in statin use for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease between 2009 and 2021 in England: a series of cross-sectional and cohort studies.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Using Large Language Models to Detect and Understand Drug Discontinuation Events in Web-Based Forums: Development and Validation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Effect of Common Medications on Longitudinal Pectoralis Muscle Area in Smokers.Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (Miami, Fla.) · 2025Article
- Best practices for the collection and analysis of patient experience data from social media for patient-focused drug development.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Review
- A Systematic Review Uncovering Modifiable Influences on Statin Adherence.Patient preference and adherence · 2025Review
- Pharmacovigilance in the digital age: gaining insight from social media data.Experimental biology and medicine (Maywood, N.J.) · 2025Review
- The Value of Social Media Analysis for Adverse Events Detection and Pharmacovigilance: Scoping Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Social Media Posts on Statins: What Can We Learn About Patient Experiences and Perspectives?Journal of the American Heart Association · 2024Article
- Patient-Reported Reasons for Antihypertensive Medication Change: A Quantitative Study Using Social Media.Drug safety · 2024Article
- Temporal characteristics and associated factors of discontinuation and outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Year 2022 in Medical Natural Language Processing: Availability of Language Models as a Step in the Democratization of NLP in the Biomedical Area.Yearbook of medical informatics · 2023Article
- Reasons for Discontinuation or Change of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors in Online Drug Reviews.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Analysis of Statin-Related Topics and Sentiments on Social Media.JAMA network open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionStatin discontinuation can have major negative health consequences. Studying the reasons for discontinuation can be challenging as traditional data collection methods have limitations. We propose an alternative approach using social media.
methodsWe used natural language processing and machine learning to extract mentions of discontinuation of statin therapy from an online health forum, WebMD ( http://www.webmd.com ). We then extracted data according to themes and identified key attributes of the people posting for themselves.
resultsWe identified 2121 statin reviews that contained information on discontinuing at least one named statin. Sixty percent of people posting declared themselves as female and the most common age category was 55-64 years. Over half the people taking statins did so for < 6 months. By far the most common reason given (90%) was patient experience of adverse events, the most common of which were musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders. The rank order of adverse events reported in WebMD was largely consistent with those reported to regulatory agencies in the US and UK. Data were available on age, sex, duration of statin use, and, in some instances, adverse event resolution and rechallenge. In some instances, details were presented on resolution of the adverse event and rechallenge.
conclusionSocial media may provide data on the reasons for switching or discontinuation of a medication, as well as unique patient perspectives that may influence continuation of a medication. This information source may provide unique data for novel interventions to reduce medication discontinuation.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.