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Background: Vaccines are promising tools to control the spread of COVID-19. An effective vaccination campaign requires government policies and community engagement, sharing experiences for social support, and voicing concerns about vaccine safety and efficiency. The increasing use of online social platforms allows us to trace large-scale communication and infer public opinion in real-time.Objective: This study aims to identify the main themes in COVID-19 vaccine-related discussion on Twitter in Japan and track how the popularity of the tweeted themes evolved during the vaccination campaign. Furthermore, we aim to understand the impact of critical social events on the popularity of the themes.Methods: We collected more than 100 million vaccine-related tweets written in Japanese and posted by 8 million users (approx. 6.4% of the Japanese population) from January 1 to October 31, 2021. We used the Latent Dirichlet Allocation to perform automated topic modeling of tweet texts during the vaccination campaign. In addition, we performed an interrupted time series regression to evaluate the impact of four critical social events on public opinion.Results: We identified 15 topics grouped into 4 themes: Personal issue, Breaking news, Politics, and Conspiracy and humour. The evolution of the popularity of themes revealed a shift in public opinion, initially sharing the attention over personal issues (individual aspect), collecting information from the news (knowledge acquisition), and government criticisms towards focusing on personal issues. Our analysis showed that the Tokyo Olympic Games affected public opinion more than other critical events but not the course of the vaccination. Public opinion about politics was significantly affected by various social events, positively shifting the attention in the early stages of the vaccination campaign and negatively later.Conclusions: This study showed a striking shift in public interest in Japan, with users splitting their attention to various themes early in the vaccination campaign and then focusing only on personal issues, as trust in vaccines and policies built up. An interrupted time series regression analysis showed that the vaccination rollout to the general population (under 65) increased the popularity of tweets about practical advice and personal vaccination experience and the Tokyo Olympic Games disrupted public opinions but not the course of the vaccination campaign. The methodology developed here allowed us to monitor the evolution of public opinion and evaluate the impact of social events on the public opinion from large-scale Twitter data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Vaccines are promising tools to control the spread of COVID-19. An effective vaccination campaign requires government policies and community engagement, sharing experiences for social support, and voicing concerns about vaccine safety and efficiency. The increasing use of online social platforms allows us to trace large-scale communication and infer public opinion in real time., Objective: This study aimed to identify the main themes in COVID-19 vaccine-related discussions on Twitter in Japan and track how the popularity of the tweeted themes evolved during the vaccination campaign. Furthermore, we aimed to understand the impact of critical social events on the popularity of the themes., Methods: We collected more than 100 million vaccine-related tweets written in Japanese and posted by 8 million users (approximately 6.4% of the Japanese population) from January 1 to October 31, 2021. We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation to perform automated topic modeling of tweet text during the vaccination campaign. In addition, we performed an interrupted time series regression analysis to evaluate the impact of 4 critical social events on public opinion., Results: We identified 15 topics grouped into the following 4 themes: (1) personal issue, (2) breaking news, (3) politics, and (4) conspiracy and humor. The evolution of the popularity of themes revealed a shift in public opinion, with initial sharing of attention over personal issues (individual aspect), collecting information from news (knowledge acquisition), and government criticism to focusing on personal issues. Our analysis showed that the Tokyo Olympic Games affected public opinion more than other critical events but not the course of vaccination. Public opinion about politics was significantly affected by various social events, positively shifting attention in the early stages of the vaccination campaign and negatively shifting attention later., Conclusions: This study showed a striking shift in public interest in Japan, with users splitting their attention over various themes early in the vaccination campaign and then focusing only on personal issues, as trust in vaccines and policies increased. An interrupted time series regression analysis showed that the vaccination rollout to the general population (under 65 years) increased the popularity of tweets about practical advice and personal vaccination experience, and the Tokyo Olympic Games disrupted public opinion but not the course of the vaccination campaign. The methodology developed here allowed us to monitor the evolution of public opinion and evaluate the impact of social events on public opinion, using large-scale Twitter data., (©Ryota Kobayashi, Yuka Takedomi, Yuri Nakayama, Towa Suda, Takeaki Uno, Takako Hashimoto, Masashi Toyoda, Naoki Yoshinaga, Masaru Kitsuregawa, Luis E C Rocha. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 22.12.2022.)

Objectives: The myositis-specific autoantibodies that characterise certain forms of idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) are useful for diagnosing dermatomyositis (DM) / polymyositis (PM) and predicting its prognosis. The autoantibody to phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase (anti-Zo) has been identified as a disease marker antibody for anti-synthetase syndrome only in a UK cohort. Here we aim to establish an ELISA for the measurement of anti-Zo and to characterise the clinical features of Japanese patients who have this autoantibody., Methods: Anti-Zo was investigated by immunoprecipitation with recombinant phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase α/β proteins. The results were confirmed by immunoprecipitation-Western blotting with cell extract. Sera from patients with DM/PM (n=224) were screened by an ELISA with the recombinant proteins. Medical records were retrospectively reviewed to obtain detailed information on the clinical phenotypes of the anti-Zo-positive patients., Results: Only two male patients were confirmed to have anti-Zo. Both patients had fever, myopathy, interstitial lung disease, and mechanic's hands, and these clinical features are consistent with those of anti-synthetase syndrome. Another patient's serum showed a higher level than the cut-off value for anti-phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase α by our in-house ELISA, but was judged to be negative for anti-Zo by immunoprecipitation-Western blotting., Conclusions: This is the first report of anti-Zo-positive IIM patients from Asia. Although Japanese patients with anti-Zo have a clinical phenotype similar to that of Caucasian patients, further large cohort studies are necessary to confirm the frequency of anti-Zo in Japanese IIM patients. Our newly developed ELISA should be validated for sensitivity and specificity in large cohorts.

Purpose: To confirm the predictive value of the results of a 4-week trial of latanoprost alone, timolol-gel alone, or a combination of the two in normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) patients, when compared with the hypotensive response after a 6-month trial using the same combination of eye drops for the same patients., Methods: One eye each of 45 NTG patients was used in a prospective 4-week trial of latanoprost alone, timolol-gel alone, or a combination of the two. Patients continued using the eye drops for 6 months, according to the results of the trial. The correlation of the results of the 6-moth use and the baseline data, and the baseline data and the results of the 4-week trial were evaluated by the paired-t test., Results: The intraocular pressure(IOP)s of patients using timolol-gel alone were 13.9 mmHg at the base line, 9.7 mmHg after the trial, and 12.0 mmHg after 6-month use(baseline, trial: p < 0.05). IOPs when using latanoprost alone were 15.3 mmHg at baseline, 11.7 mmHg after the trial, and 11.5 mmHg after 6-month use(baseline: p < 0.05, trial: p = 0.33). IOPs using timolol-gel and latanoprost in combination were 14.8 mmHg at baseline, 11.4 mmHg after the trial, and 12.0 mmHg after 6-month use (baseline: p < 0:05, trial: p = 0.14)., Conclusion: The result of the 4-weeks trial of latanoprost alone or in combination with timolol-gel can be indicative of the IOP after 6-month use.