Sentiment Analysis and Natural Language Processing Using Reddit Data to Evaluate Patient Opinions on Hair Loss Therapeutics
July 2023
TLDR People on Reddit generally have positive opinions about hair loss treatments.
The study used sentiment analysis and natural language processing techniques on Reddit comments from r/femalehairloss to determine patient sentiment about key treatments for female hair loss. The most frequently cited treatments were minoxidil and spironolactone. Comments mentioning PRP and minoxidil were the second and third most positive on average. Comments referencing dutasteride were the most positive, but this may be skewed by the low number of dutasteride-only comments. Finasteride comments were the least positive on average but were still slightly greater than 0. The study concluded that opinions about hair loss therapeutics on the examined forum were on average positive, demonstrating the feasibility of performing sentiment analysis on Reddit comments.
