Misinformation Persists in Complementary Health: Evaluating the Reliability and Quality of YouTube-Based Information on the Use of Acupuncture for Chronic Pain

Majesty Greer,1 Sai Kamma,2 Henry Tran,2 Bright Etumuse,2 Jay D Shah,3 Youshaa El-Abed,4 Jane O Onyemachi,2 Nasir Hussain,5 Thomas P Pittelkow,6 Ryan S D’Souza6 1Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA; 2University of Texas Medical Branch School of Medicine, Galveston, TX, USA; 3Department of Anesthesiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; 4College of Osteopathic Medicine, Kansas City University, Kansas City, MO, USA; 5Department of Anesthesiology, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA; 6Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USACorrespondence: Ryan S D’Souza, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St. SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA, Email [email protected]: Acupuncture is commonly used to treat chronic pain. Patients often access public social media platforms for healthcare information when querying acupuncture. Our study aims to appraise the utility, accuracy, and quality of information available on YouTube, a popular social media platform, on acupuncture for chronic pain treatment.Methods: Using search terms such as “acupuncture for chronic pain” and “acupuncture pain relief”, the top 54 videos by view count were selected. Included videos were > 1 minute duration, contained audio in English, had > 7000 views, and was related to acupuncture. One primary outcome of interest was categorizing each video’s usefulness as useful, misleading, or neither. Another primary outcome of interest was the quality and reliability of each video using validated instruments, including the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) tool and the Global Quality Scale (GQS). The means were calculated for the video production characteristics, production sources, and mDISCERN and GQS scores. Continuous and categorical outcomes were compared using Student’s t-test and chi-square test, respectively.Results: Of the 54 videos, 57.4% were categorized as useful, 14.8% were misleading, and 27.8% were neither. Useful videos had a mean GQS and mDISCERN score of 3.77± 0.67 and 3.48± 0.63, respectively, while misleading videos had mean GQS and mDISCERN score of 2.50± 0.53 and 2.38± 0.52, respectively. 41.8% of the useful videos were produced by a healthcare institution while none of the misleading videos were produced by a healthcare institution. However, 87.5% of the misleading videos were produced by health media compared to only 25.8% of useful videos from health media.Discussion: As patients increasingly depend on platforms like YouTube for trustworthy information on complementary health practices such as acupuncture, our study emphasizes the critical need for more higher-quality videos from unbiased healthcare institutions and physicians to ensure patients are receiving reliable information regarding this topic.Keywords: acupuncture, chronic pain, social media, anesthesia, information dissemination, interne

Resilient and dynamic soil biology

Agricultural intensification has delivered great gains in terms of food production but has come at great environmental cost. Consequently, there is growing societal demand for more sustainable farming systems, i.e., sustainable intensification. Within this, there is increasing recognition of the ecosystem services provided by soil organisms that contribute both to agricultural production and environmental sustainability. Conventional tillage-based farming systems experience frequent and significant soil disturbance, which negatively impacts many key soil organism groups, e.g., fungi and earthworms. Loss of these soil organisms results in loss of critical soil ecosystem services, including those related to soil nutrient cycling, crop nutrient uptake, and soil water management. Conversion of farming systems from conventional tillage to no-till can allow recovery of soil biology and restoration of soil ecosystem services. Thus, no-till farming systems can contribute positively towards sustainable intensification. However, important knowledge gaps and challenges remain. Greater knowledge of what soil organisms are present in soil and what services they provide is urgently needed. The ultimate goal is to understand how soil biology can be manipulated through management to provide desirable ecosystem services in space and time