This is a long shot, but I'm going to give it a try anyway.
I remember reading not too long ago (within the past couple of months) about researchers who studied the ability of a person's social network to diagnose or detect that person's disease. The gist of the study was that the network did surprisingly well.
I don't remember the exact study design (whether network members were explicitly asked to guess, or whether the researchers harnessed guesses from off-hand comments). I don't remember how the user's social network was defined either (but presumably it was probably through Facebook or Twitter). In fact, I don't remember much beyond what I've written above, and I even might have remembered something incorrectly. I only read the headline and skimmed the article. However, I realize the details of this article are now incredibly important to me for a grant proposal.
As soon as the system allows me to, I will offer a bounty of 200 points. Help please!
NOTE: I am not thinking of this study, as compelling as it is. I recall the study I'm looking for being more of a scientific study rather than an anecdotal case report.
8 answers
This is indeed an interesting question. In the event that you are not able to locate what originally came to mind, allow me to offer a study of social networks and dietary patterns. Diet is one step, in many cases, from certain diseases. See this paper, entitled Social network concordance in food choice among spouses, friends, and siblings.
What I did not add when I first posted this was the main result: The aspect of the diet that is most influenced by the person's social network is snack and alcohol intake. Now that's intriguing.
Is it one of these papers ?
Apparently it's not Whole-Genome Sequencing and Social-Network Analysis of a Tuberculosis Outbreak (NEJM 2011). You might instead be interested in:
Just to show this isn't a new idea and the epidemiology literature here might be is older than you think:
A prospective study of social networks in relation to total mortality and cardiovascular disease in men in the USA. (J Epidemiol Community Health 1996)
Social networks as predictors of ischemic heart disease, cancer, stroke and hypertension: Incidence, survival and mortality (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 1992)
I like the historical perspective +1.
Thanks, corrected.
What about this one in breast cancer research ?
I kinda remember some buzz about that too, but it escapes me in the details too. I did a search for tweets though (as I suspected that's where I saw it) and I found this one. It is, however, in Danish. Jeg taler lidt dansk, but not enough to help you with this. However, every Dane I've ever spoken to has better English than many of my friends, and if you contact the authors I bet they'd help you out :)
Can Differential Diagnosis Be Crowdsourced to Facebook Friends? is the place I found it via Topsy.
This appears to be the paper: Lægfolk kan bruge deres Facebook-venner til at få hjælp vedrørende medicinske diagnoser
Google translate was enough to get the gist of it. Mary wins! After starting to think I'd just imagined the whole thing, this study was exactly the one I was thinking of. In case anyone else is interested, the PDF version is here: http://www.ugeskriftet.dk/LF/UFL/2011/49/pdf/VP61143.pdf
Hi Andrew,
I also remember vaguely reading something like that. I think this might be the one.
Social Media Valuable Tool to Recruit Study Participants for Rare Diseases
some close ones I came across:
I hope this helps.
Speaking of using social networking to recruit patients, check out this one as well: Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection: A Disease-Specific, Social Networking Community–Initiated Study (http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/content/86/9/845.short)
maybe this study on military personel:
Some other articles you could find interesting:
Rapid Dengue and Outbreak Detection with Mobile Systems and Social Networks
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Not enough for an answer, but might help as a starting point: http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_how_social_networks_predict_epidemics.html
maybe not enough for an answer, but enough for a +1...