Reviews from patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who post on social media about their medications are more positive than negative, especially for biologics and targeted synthetic treatments, a study shows.

Researchers from Fiona Stanley Hospital and the University of Western Australia in Perth drew on data from health web analytics firm Treato that searches and analyses millions of social media posts.

They found almost 55,000 posts over 14 months that appeared to be from patients with RA, with 95% originating from the US and the remainder from other English-speaking countries, including Australia.

For biologics and targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) there were more than six positive comments for every five negative ones, giving a positive to negative ratio of 1.21, the authors reported in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.