We are pleased that our new paper using shopping data to understand trends in laxative purchasing has been published in PLOS Digital Health.
In this work led by Romana, we analyse loyalty card data from 750,000+ customers of a major UK pharmacy retailer, looking to understand if patterns in laxative self-medication reflect similar trends in weight loss medications.
In sum:
- We find that laxative purchasing increases largely in the summer months, in line with the increase in hot weather and potential weight management behaviours.
- We introduce a novel approach to approximate medication dosages, creating more accurate inferences than those based on sales units alone (important, as pack sizes can vary!)
- Our results provide post-policy support for the 2020 MHRA regulations, which aimed to curb stimulant laxative misuse by decreasing pack sizes, limiting sales to over 18’s, and using on-pack warnings to dissuade from weight control misuse.
It is exciting for us to have this work out there – it is a great example showing how loyalty card data can be used to approximate real-world, national patterns in health: vital insights that can fuel policy change for the public benefit. We hope to contribute many more similar works in the near future!
The full paper can be found here.