Can a Social Media Application be a Valid Educational Tool for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Patients?

BACKGROUND: TikTok (ByteDance, Beijing, China) is the fastest growing social media application (SMA) to date and has become a major source of information for medicine. The rising use of media platforms by patients and practitioners alike plays a significant role in the perception of healthcare. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to identify the presence and popularity of oral and maxillofacial surgery content on the SMA, to measure whether the information shared is useful for viewers, and whether there are differences in quality of the videos between video content producer groups. STUDY DESIGN, SETTING, AND SAMPLE: A cross-sectional study was used to evaluate oral and maxillofacial surgery content on the SMA. Included videos were published during a 3-month period (November 16, 2021 to February 17, 2022) and mentioned "oral surgery" or "wisdom teeth" in the video description, title, or hashtag. INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: The independent variable was video content producer-content created by health professionals versus laypersons. MAIN OUTCOME VARIABLE: Quality of each video was determined by the information in the video and its usefulness, using the Global Quality Scale (GQS) criteria. COVARIATES: Topic was categorized as educational or anecdotal. Popularity was measured by the number of likes accumulated. ANALYSES: Statistical analysis was performed using 2-sample t-tests. Statistical significance was achieved with a P value < .05 with 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: Of 558 videos searched, 426 videos met study criteria. GQS score was greater in health professional videos (MHP = 3.30) versus layperson videos (ML = 2.05) (P < .05). Most video content producers were laypersons (69%) and videos were mostly anecdotal (87%). Health professional videos had greater popularity than layperson videos (P < .05). Health professionals and laypersons averaged 25,148 likes and 2,109 likes, respectively. All videos combined totaled 3,939,685 likes. CONCLUSION: By analyzing GQS and the popularity of videos, it has shown that health professionals produced higher quality videos along with greater number of likes. With 39% of videos by health professionals being educational, it shows that we are using the SMA to instruct patients. However, there is still room to produce more educational rather than anecdotal videos with the goal to provide accurate information to patients.

Protein kinase C-α upregulates sodium channel Nav1.9 in nociceptive dorsal root ganglion neurons in an inflammatory arthritis pain model of rat.

Previous studies have found that increased expression of Nav1.9 and protein kinase C (PKC) contributes to pain hypersensitivity in a couple of inflammatory pain models. Here we want to observe if PKC can regulate the expression of Nav1.9 in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) pain model. A chronic knee joint inflammation model was produced by intra-articular injection of the complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) in rats. Nociceptive behaviors including mechanical, cold, and heat hyperalgesia were examined. The expression of Nav1.9 and PKCα in DRG was detected by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction, Western blot, and immunofluorescence. The in vitro and in vivo effects of a PKC activator (phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate [PMA]) and a PKC inhibitor (GF-109203X) on the expression of Nav1.9 were examined. Moreover, the effects of PKC modulators on nociceptive behaviors were studied. Increased mechanical, heat, and cold sensitivity was observed 3 to 14 days after CFA injection. Parallel increases in messenger RNA and protein expression of Nav1.9 and PKCα were found. Immunofluorescence experiments found that Nav1.9 was preferentially colocalized with IB4+DRG neurons in RA rats. In cultured DRG neurons, PMA increased Nav1.9 expression while GF-109203X prevented the effect of PMA. PMA increased Nav1.9 expression in naïve rats while GF-109203X decreased Nav1.9 expression in RA rats. In naïve rats, PMA caused mechanical and cold hyperalgesia. On the other hand, GF-109203X attenuated mechanical and cold hyperalgesia in RA-pain model. Nav1.9 might be upregulated by PKCα in DRG, which contributes to pain hypersensitivity in CFA-induced chronic knee joint inflammation model of RA pain.

TNFα in the Trigeminal Nociceptive System Is Critical for Temporomandibular Joint Pain.

Previous studies have shown that tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) is significantly increased in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA)-treated temporomandibular joint (TMJ) tissues. However, it is unclear whether TNFα in the trigeminal nociceptive system contributes to the development of TMJ pain. In the present study, we investigated the role of TNFα in trigeminal ganglia (TG) and spinal trigeminal nucleus caudalis (Sp5C) in CFA-induced inflammatory TMJ pain. Intra-TMJ injection of CFA (10 µl, 5 mg/ml) induced inflammatory pain in the trigeminal nerve V2- and V3-innervated skin areas of WT mice, which was present on day 1 after CFA and persisted for at least 10 days. TNFα in both TG and Sp5C of WT mice was upregulated after CFA injection. The CFA-induced TMJ pain was significantly inhibited in TNFα KO mice. The immunofluorescence staining showed that intra-TMJ CFA injection not only enhanced co-localization of TNFα with Iba1 (a marker for microglia) in both TG and Sp5C but also markedly increased the expression of TNFα in the Sp5C neurons. By the methylated DNA immunoprecipitation assay, we also found that DNA methylation at the TNF gene promoter region in the TG was dramatically diminished after CFA injection, indicating that epigenetic regulation may be involved in the CFA-enhanced TNFα expression in our model. Our results suggest that TNFα in the trigeminal nociceptive system plays a critical role in CFA-induced inflammatory TMJ pain.