Perceptions of the effects of following specific diets among people with multiple sclerosis: A web scraping analysis of the multiple sclerosis subreddit.

BACKGROUND

Dietary modifications are commonly reported by people with multiple sclerosis (MS). While preliminary studies suggest benefits of several diets on MS symptoms and quality of life, little real-world evidence exists supporting these preliminary findings.

OBJECTIVE

To assess dietary modifications and their perceived positive and negative effects as reported by users of the MS subreddit on the social media platform, Reddit.

METHODS

Discussion threads on the r/MultipleSclerosis subreddit containing the words 'diet', 'dietitian', or 'dietician' were extracted from inception to the date of acquisition (15 January 2025) using the RedditExtractoR package of RStudio. Each individual discussion thread was then uploaded to the web-based Taguette platform and deductively coded into four predefined categories: Mention of specific diet, mention of dietitian, perceived positive effect of diet, perceived no/negative effect of diet.

RESULTS

A total of 306 discussion threads were increasingly posted starting 28 June 2012 to 15 January 2025. Specific diets were mentioned 1,276 times and included the Paleolithic (335 mentions), plant-based (315 mentions), ketogenic (167 mentions), fasting (128 mentions), Mediterranean (114 mentions), and general (217 mentions) diets. There were 641 effects of diets reported which were mostly positive (71.0 %). The percent of positive reports were 92.2 % for fasting, 90.7 % for Mediterranean, 86.3 % for the ketogenic, 79.5 % for the Paleolithic, 73.5 % for plant-based, and 57.5 % for general diets.

CONCLUSION

Users of the r/MultipleSclerosis subreddit increasingly discussed diets over a 12.5-year period and reported more positive effects of diets compared to negative effects.