Medical information online 'not always reliable'
Thursday 22nd September 2011
Doctors may want to discourage patients from seeking medical information online, after a group of neurologists deemed some of it unreliable.
In a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers detailed how they had reviewed the most frequently viewed YouTube videos about movement disorders.
They concluded that the individuals in many of these videos are not suffering from Parkinson's disease or any movement disorder.
According to the authors, this could confuse patients who do have life-changing neurological disorders and are looking for information on the web.
YouTube is a popular platform for patients to share their medical stories online in video form.
In the study, seven neurologists searched the video sharing site for the most popular videos regarding Dystonia, Parkinsonism, chorea, myoclonus, tics and tremors.
They selected the top three videos depicting the various movement disorders.
In 66 per cent of the videos, the movement disorders seen were "psychogenic", meaning that the abnormal movement originated from a psychological condition or mental state, rather than any physical cause.
Of these videos, approximately half contained advice about specific therapies used to treat the movement disorder.
While the researchers conducted these analyses independently, their diagnoses concurred in 87 to 100 per cent of all cases.
Senior investigator at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders Mark Hallett said that while there is a "great deal of good information" on the internet, users must be wary of the facts they gather.
"Patients and doctors have to be very thoughtful and careful when looking for information on YouTube, as well as the Internet in general," he warned.
In other news, cells taken from the mouth could in future be used to treat neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's disease, scientists have said.
A team from Tel Aviv University found that cells collected from the oral mucosal, the membrane inside the mouth, are as easily manipulated into stem cells as those take from embryos.
Written by Mathew Horton
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