Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 17, 2021
Date Accepted: Apr 10, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Apr 23, 2021
Google Trends for pain search terms in the world’s most populated areas before and after the first recorded COVID-19 case: an infodemiological study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online analysis of search queries has become a very useful method in various academic fields for understanding timely and regional differences in the public interest in certain terms and concepts. Particularly in health and medical research, Google TrendsTM been increasingly used over the last decade.
Objective:
This study aims to investigate, using Google TrendsTM, the search activity of pain-related parameters of the most populated countries over a nearly two-year period, from before the first confirmed COVID-19 cases (January 2018) until October 2020.
Methods:
Search terms from the following areas were used for the analysis: India, China, EU, USA, Brazil, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Twenty-four pain location–based expressions were used. Search terms were extracted using the local language of the respective country. Python scripts were used for data mining. All statistical calculations were performed by exploratory data analysis and nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-tests.
Results:
Although the overall search activity for pain related terms increased, apart from pain entities such as headache, chest pain, and sore throat discordant search activity could be observed. Among the most populous areas, pain-related search parameters for shoulder-, abdominal-, and chest-pain as well as headache and toothache differed significantly between before and after the first officially confirmed COVID-19 cases. In addition, a significant increase or decrease in pain-related search parameters was shown to be heterogeneous between the most populated areas. We also showed that the significant increase or decrease in pain-related search parameters was heterogeneous between most populous areas.
Conclusions:
As internet searches are a surrogate of public interest we assume that our data are indicative of an increased incidence of pain after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as these increased incidendes vary across both, geographical and anatomical locations, our data could motivate to develop specific startegies to support the most affected groups.
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