AB0720 HOW DOES PAIN VARY? IDENTIFYING UNIQUE PAIN EXPERIENCES BETWEEN ARTHRITIS COMMUNITIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Authors: M. Flurie, Z. Cline, N. Hemmenway, L. Genoves, C. Defelice, M. Picone
Journal: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2024)

<h3>Background:</h3> Different types of arthritis vary in their etiology and degree of joint and body part involvement. Pain, however, is a hallmark feature experienced by patients with various forms of arthritis. Although pain is a consistent feature, it is not fully understood how people living with different forms of arthritis differ in their pain experiences or how pain impacts mental and emotional health. To best understand the patient perspective, it is essential to listen to and interpret experiences from patient communities. Using a natural language processing (NLP) engine, we explored social media conversations discussing pain in 4 distinct types of arthritis: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), and osteoarthritis (OA). <h3>Objectives:</h3> We compared reported patient experiences with pain and its impact on emotional well-being among 4 social media communities. The online communities evaluated were composed of people living with RA, PA, AS, and OA. The objective of the current study was to compare descriptions of pain among the 4 differently diagnosed social media communities. An exploratory aim was to identify unique emotional impacts associated with pain experiences. <h3>Methods:</h3> Public social media sources were analyzed. All data came from Reddit, a social network of millions of communities dedicated to specific topics, called <i>subreddits</i>. This analysis targeted subreddits dedicated to people living with four types of arthritis (e.g., <i>r/rheumatoid, r/psoriaticarthritis, r/osteoarthritis, r/ankylosingspondylitis</i>). The NLP engine used in the current study was trained to identify and extract mentions of clinical terminology in social media conversations and relate them to overarching concepts. Clinical categories of <i>symptoms</i>, <i>emotions</i>, and <i>body parts</i> were targeted for this analysis. First, the engine extracted conversations discussing the symptom "pain". "Pain" mentions and variations were contrasted by arthritis group (via χ<sup>2</sup> test of independence) to determine the unique pain language associated with each type of arthritis. "Body part/s" discussed with pain were then compared across arthritis groups. The exploratory analysis involved extracting "emotion" mentions (e.g., happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, anger) discussed in "pain" conversations to describe the potential impact of arthritis pain on emotional states. <h3>Results:</h3> Targeting subreddits dedicated to people living with 4 types of arthritis (RA, PA, AS, OA) resulted in the processing of more than 472,000 submissions and replies from 2012 to 2023. The general concept of "pain" was mentioned by patients most frequently across all arthritis groups (100,000+ mentions). The AS community reported several types of pain, with significantly larger proportions of mentions of "sharp pain", "chronic pain", "rib pain", "back pain", "sciatica", "hip joint pain", and "neck pain". RA had proportionally lower mentions of the pain types noted by the AS community. PA had a significantly larger proportion of mentions of "arthralgia" and "tenalgia". The OA community mentioned generic, nonspecific "pain" in proportionally higher numbers than other patient groups. Among the 6 primary emotions, the most frequently mentioned in "pain" conversations, in all patient groups, was "fear". <h3>Conclusion:</h3> The substantial impact of pain on several distinct arthritis communities is summarized in this work. Pain was the most prevalent concept across all 4 arthritis groups analyzed. The collective way in which individuals discuss their pain seems to be unique to each patient community. This study indicates that people living with different forms of arthritis experience pain on a spectrum ranging from relatively generic (e.g., OA) to more detailed (e.g., AS), in which patients use more specific terminology to describe their individual pain experience. Regardless of the type of pain experienced, fear was the most prevalent emotion expressed by community members. Future work should continue to explore the types and subtypes of pain for a more finite understanding of the disease burden in arthritis communities. <h3>REFERENCES:</h3> <b>NIL.</b> <h3>Acknowledgements:</h3> <b>NIL.</b> <h3>Disclosure of Interests:</h3> Maurice Flurie Yes Our clients are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including, but not limited to Horizon Therapeutics, Chiesi Global Rare Disease, Novartis, Harmony Biosciences, and Avadel, Zachary Cline Yes Our clients are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including, but not limited to Horizon Therapeutics, Chiesi Global Rare Disease, Novartis, Harmony Biosciences, and Avadel, Nicole Hemmenway Salix, AstraZeneca, and Grunenthal, Laura Genoves: None declared, Christopher DeFelice Yes Our clients are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including, but not limited to Horizon Therapeutics, Chiesi Global Rare Disease, Novartis, Harmony Biosciences, and Avadel, Maria Picone Yes Our clients are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including, but not limited to Horizon Therapeutics, Chiesi Global Rare Disease, Novartis, Harmony Biosciences, and Avadel.