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Although statins are the cornerstone for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, adherence to the medications remains low. One reason for nonadherence might be negative patient beliefs and misperceptions about statins. Investigators identified Twitter posts (tweets) mentioning any of eight specific statin drugs from 2013 to 2018 and used qualitative research methods to classify the tweets, both thematically and by who likely posted them.
Of the 11,852 tweets analyzed; 44% were health related, and 35% of these were fact based, often linking to published studies. Of the health-related posts, 33% seemed to be from a statin user (i.e., employing first-person pronouns), and 16% of these recounted an adverse event. Another 21% …