Digital Epidemiology of Prescription Drug References on X (Formerly Twitter): Neural Network Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis.

Background: Data from the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) can provide insights into the types of language that are used when discussing drug use. In past research using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), we found that tweets containing "street names" of prescription drugs were difficult to classify due to the similarity to other colloquialisms and lack of clarity over how the terms were used. Conversely, "brand name" references were more amenable to machine-driven categorization.

Investigating extra-medical opioid use and social networks among people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Introduction: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and extra-medical opioid Use (EMOU) frequently co-occur. Few studies have examined the relationship between EMOU and social networks among people with PTSD. Accordingly, this study examined social networks in a sample of people with PTSD in the United States by assessing the association between social network size/diversity and lifetime EMOU status.