Serendipitous drug repurposing through social media

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Date Posted

Research Study Description

The purpose of this research study is to see if we can use social media to survey people worldwide in order to discover unexpected beneficial effects of drugs, nutraceuticals or herbal medicines. We are hoping you can help us by answering a very short survey with the goal of finding better safer drugs for both rare and common disorders which can be hard to treat. We are interested in all sorts of medical and psychologic problems, such as (but not limited to) obesity, mental health issues, childhood cancer, vascular anomalies, symptoms like baldness or itching. Think of anything that you are hoping might be treatable. We are asking people across the US, Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia for help since different disorders occur in different parts of the world. The use of medicines also may be different.

Including the consumer as a partner in drug discovery through self-report of serendipitous drug benefits (occurrence of benefit by chance) could identify drugs with potential for use in other disorders. You are being asked to take part in a research study because you are a member of a disease-based on-line community or patient advocacy group, or because you are Facebook friends with someone who is. Our anonymous survey consists of 4 questions. We want to know what drugs you may be taking or have taken for any problem and whether that medicine seemed to help another problem. Parents or guardians can respond on behalf of their children as well as themselves. We also want to know what types of people are interested enough to respond to this survey, and for that reason will ask about your age, gender, race/ethnicity, country of origin, and whether you answered the survey in English or another language. Your participation in this study will take about 5-10 minutes. We hope that 1-5 million people will take part in this research study! Responses are anonymous and the research data will not be associated with your name.



Name of Organization:
University of North Carolina


For questions, please email::
[email protected]


Study Link: 
https://redcap.link/globaldrugrepurposing