INTRODUCTION
Patients are increasingly turning to social media for disease/treatment advice and support.1 This has varying benefits2 but involves the risk of inaccurate information.3,4 Reddit, a news/social content discussion platform site with 1.1 billion active monthly members, hosts numerous dermatology "subReddit" forums dedicated to dermatologic advice/education/treatment experience.4,5 Rosacea, an inflammatory dermatosis affecting 2% to 22% percent of fair-skinned individuals6 and up to 10% of individuals in regions with predominantly skin of color populations,7 has its own subReddit, r/Rosacea, with 74,000 active users. This study analyzes r/Rosacea and its alignment with National Rosacea Society (NRS) standard management options.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
On 6/30/24, the "top" r/Rosacea "help" posts were filtered for the past year (6/30/23–6/30/24). Three authors (JK, RA, UN) extracted each post’s text, number of upvotes, percentage of upvotes (upvotes/total votes), and ≤10 non-deleted comments with >1 upvote. Posts were excluded if they were "[deleted]", commentless, had "0" upvotes, or had "deleted" authors. Posts were categorized as "emotional support," "product recommendation/guidance request," "first time diagnosis inquiry," "diagnosis follow-up inquiry," or "other," and then mined for sub-topics. Comments for all the first-time diagnosis posts and the top 10 diagnosis follow-up inquiry posts were evaluated for alignment with the standard management options published by the NRS Expert Committee and assigned a grade of A, B, or C (Table 2).
RESULTS
The final analysis included 185 posts and 74 comments. Posts were primarily in the "treatment/regimen experiences" category (48.65%), followed by "diagnosis follow-up inquiry" (19.46%), and "product recommendation/guidance request" (16.22%). The top 5 subtopics were "redness/flushing," "negative social/emotional/functional effects," "moisturizer/moisturizing," "triggers/exacerbating factors," and "bumps/papules/acneiform lesions" (Table 1).
