ArticleDigital health
Unraveling dental caries misinformation: Identifying predictive factors for engagement on Instagram.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Quality and content evaluation of male HPV infection on Bilibili and TikTok: a cross-sectional study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Misinformation or education? A comparative analysis of Instagram posts related to full mouth rehabilitation.Frontiers in dental medicine · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: This study aimed to identify predictive factors for engagement with dental caries-related posts on Instagram. Methods: Using CrowdTangle, 10,000 English-language posts were retrieved based on total interactions. From these, 2063 posts were evaluated using predetermined inclusion criteria, and a final sample of 500 posts was selected. Two independent investigators classified the posts according to dichotomized criteria: author profile (regular or commercial users), sentiment (positive or neutral/negative), motivation (financial or nonfinancial), format (link or photo), aim of content (prevention or treatment), and facticity (information or misinformation). Predictive factors for total interaction and overperforming scores were determined using multiple logistic regression models. Results: Misinformation accounted for 44% of posts. Most posts were shared by regular users (67.8%), used a photo format (61%), and expressed a positive sentiment (73.8%). Prevention-related posts were significantly related to financial motivation, while treatment-related posts were linked to time of publication, neutral/negative sentiment, and photo format. Older posts were positively associated with misinformation (odds ratio (OR) = 1.45). Positive sentiment (OR = 1.71) and regular user profiles (OR = 1.93) were associated with higher total interactions. In contrast, business profiles (OR = 2.39) and posts with neutral/negative sentiment (OR = 1.79) were associated with overperforming scores. Conclusion: Despite a significant amount of misinformation, only sentiment and author profiles were predictive factors for total interaction and overperforming scores in Instagram posts about dental caries.
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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.