[Assessment of health information available online regarding meningococcal B vaccine recommendations].

OBJECTIVE

The quality of health information online is a concern to governments and users. Our objective was to determine the extent to which the information available online regarding meningococcal B vaccine recommendations adhere to the guidelines of the Spanish Ministry of Health.

METHODS

Cross-sectional study carried out in April 2017. The study assessed adherence of information regarding vaccine recommendations to official guidelines. The information was collected via Google with 20 keywords. The Chi-squared test was used to analyze the association between the adhered information and its origin.

RESULTS

In total, 186 web links were analyzed. Adhered recommendations were found in a range of links, from 52.2% (97/186) with an indication for people with properdin deficiency/terminal component pathway deficiency, to 79.6% for outbreak situations. Vaccinating children from two months of age was a recommendation not issued by the Ministry that was found in 72.6% of the links. For each of the Ministry recommendations, official public health institutions always provide information adhering to them. Digital media provided information about vaccination adhering to official guidelines with a significantly higher frequency than scientific societies in cases of people with properdin deficiency/terminal component pathway deficiency (OR: 2.72; 95%CI: 1.18-6.28) and asplenia (OR: 3.83; 95%CI: 1.66-8.86).

CONCLUSIONS

We have observed a difficulty to obtain adhered information. Users must be encouraged to access websites of official public health institutions when looking for information about this vaccine.