ArticleJMIR public health and surveillance
Gordie Howe's "Miraculous Treatment": Case Study of Twitter Users' Reactions to a Sport Celebrity's Stem Cell Treatment.
Article in JMIR public health and surveillance. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- From the Lab to Patients: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for Stroke.Translational stroke research · 2020Pooled it
- (Mis)trust among patients seeking unproven stem cell therapies: a qualitative analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Myths and Realities about the Private Sector Stem Cell Industry in Malaysia.Asian bioethics review · 2025Article
- Searching for information about stem cells online in an age of artificial intelligence: How should the stem cell community respond?Stem cell reports · 2024Article
- Perspectives on Surrogacy in Chinese Social Media: A Content Analysis of Microblogs on Weibo.The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2022Article
- International stem cell tourism: a critical literature review and evidence-based recommendations.International health · 2022Review
- TwiMed: Twitter and PubMed Comparable Corpus of Drugs, Diseases, Symptoms, and Their Relations.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFormer Detroit Red Wing Gordie Howe received stem cell (SC) treatment in Mexico in December 2014 for a stroke he suffered in October 2014. The news about his positive response to the SC treatment prompted discussion on social networks like Twitter.
objectiveThis study aims to provide information about discussions that took place on Twitter regarding Howe's SC treatment and SC treatment in general. In particular, this study examines whether tweets portrayed a positive or negative attitude towards Howe's SC treatment, whether or not tweets mention that the treatment is unproven, and whether the tweets mention risks associated with the SC treatment.
methodsThis is an infodemiology study, harnessing big data published on the Internet for public health research and analysis of public engagement. A corpus of 2783 tweets about Howe's SC treatment was compiled using a program that collected English-language tweets from December 19, 2014 at 00:00 to February 7, 2015 at 00:00. A content analysis of the corpus was conducted using a coding framework developed through a two-stage process.
results78.87% (2195/2783) of tweets mentioned improvements to Howe's health. Only one tweet explicitly mentioned that Howe's SC treatment was unproven, and 3 tweets warned that direct-to-consumer SC treatments lacked scientific evidence. In addition, 10.31% (287/2783) of tweets mentioned challenges with SC treatment that have been raised by scientists and researchers, and 3.70% (103/2783) of tweets either defined Howe as a "stem cell tourist" or claimed that his treatment was part of "stem cell tourism". In general, 71.79% (1998/2783) of tweets portrayed a positive attitude towards Howe's SC treatment.
conclusionsOur study found the responses to Howe's treatment on Twitter to be overwhelmingly positive. There was far less attention paid to the lack of scientific evidence regarding the efficacy of the treatment. Unbalanced and uncritical discussion on Twitter regarding SC treatments is another example of inaccurate representations of SC treatments that may create unrealistic expectations that will facilitate the market for unproven stem cell therapies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.