Dissemination of health information through social networks: twitter and antibiotics.

Background: This study reviewed Twitter status updates mentioning "antibiotic(s)" to determine overarching categories and explore evidence of misunderstanding or misuse of antibiotics.

Methods: One thousand Twitter status updates mentioning antibiotic(s) were randomly selected for content analysis and categorization. To explore cases of potential misunderstanding or misuse, these status updates were mined for co-occurrence of the following terms: "cold + antibiotic(s)," "extra + antibiotic(s)," "flu + antibiotic(s)," "leftover + antibiotic(s)," and "share + antibiotic(s)" and reviewed to confirm evidence of misuse or misunderstanding.