S3190 #COVID19: Twitter as a Resource for IBD Patients During a Global Pandemic

INTRODUCTION: In December 2019, a novel corona virus (COVID-19) emerged from Wuhan, China and within 3 months caused a global pandemic with high morbidity and mortality Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients may be at particular risk given immunocompromised state Since Twitter is a source of information sharing, this study evaluated frequency, content, and origin of Twitter messaging focused on COVID-19 and IBD METHODS: Social Feed Manager software (version 2 0 0: GWU Libraries, 2019) accessed Twitter's application programming interface to obtain user information, origin and content of social media posts related to COVID-19 and IBD between March 11 and 18, 2020 SFM queried Twitter for ≤COVID19 ≤CoronaVirus or ≤CoronaOutbreak AND any comment containing ?inflammatory bowel disease?, ?IBD?, ?Crohn's? or ?Ulcerative Colitis ? Messages that did not reference key terms and non-English messages were excluded Individual user descriptions, tweets, and linked websites were analyzed for content Analysis was performed using Chi-square, with significance set at P<0 05 RESULTS: 1623 of 1648 (98 5%) were analyzed 938 (57%) were personal user accounts, 444 (27%) physician, 109 (7%) non-physician health professionals, 51 (3%) support groups, 43 (3%) professional organizations, remainder were commercial or unclassified More tweets were from personal versus medical associated accounts (P<0 0001) Content was mostly informational (76%, n=1226, P , 0 0001), 7% (n=89) were treatment related, 24% (n=296) related to the IBD-Covid registry and 3% (n=34) were symptom related The remainder were 8% (n=128) concerns, 4% (n=67) support, 3% (n=51) inquiry and 9% (n=151) other 327 tweets attached linksprimarily linked to established medical resources (67%, n=204, P<0 0001) Tweeters spanned±continents with most common from United States (n=524), United Kingdom (n=316), European Union (n=120), Canada (n=116) There was a significant difference (P<0 0001) in the rate of messaging from US users compared to others CONCLUSION: This study revealed that Twitter is used globally to share information on IBD and COVID-19 While most tweets came from personal accounts, the majority of content was informational and links more often came from established sources Twitter provided opportunities for patient advocacy, support, and up to date information on disease prevention and treatment in a rapidly changing environment Twitter can be an easily accessible healthcare education tool in a global pandemic to disseminate information