Signs &amp; Symptoms of Dextromethorphan Exposure from YouTube

Michael Chary,Andrew Mckenzie,Alex F Manini,Nicholas Genes,Emily H Park,Julia Sun,Renaud Lambiotte

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082452

Abstract

Detailed data on the recreational use of drugs are difficult to obtain through traditional means, especially for substances like Dextromethorphan (DXM) which are available over-the-counter for medicinal purposes. In this study, we show that information provided by commenters on YouTube is useful for uncovering the toxicologic effects of DXM. Using methods of computational linguistics, we were able to recreate many of the clinically described signs and symptoms of DXM ingestion at various doses, using information extracted from YouTube comments. Our study shows how social networks can enhance our understanding of recreational drug effects.

Highlights

Motivation This study investigated whether YouTube is a useful source of information on the recreational use of an over the counter substance whose usage is, otherwise, challenging to track
If data from social media about recreational drug use concord with clinically documented symptoms and doses, those data could be used to explore aspects of recreational drug use, such as shortterm trends, that are mostly inaccessible with current means: case reports from emergency rooms and poison center calls
This paper demonstrates information about commonly ingested doses of DXM and their side effects can be retrieved from YouTube comments using techniques from information retrieval and natural language processing

Summary

Introduction

Motivation This study investigated whether YouTube is a useful source of information on the recreational use of an over the counter substance whose usage is, otherwise, challenging to track. This study represents an application of computational linguistics to social media to provide a new data source for healthcare professionals. Dextromethorphan (DXM) Dextromethorphan (DXM) is marketed as a cough suppressant and is found in many over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold preparations. At low dosages, it binds to the s1 opioid receptor, which accounts for its suppression of the cough reflex [1]. In addition to dissociative effects,, tachycardia, hypertension, agitation, ataxia, and psychosis have been reported at those higher dosages [5,6,7]

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