ArticleCureus2019
Is There Seasonality in Hypothyroidism? A Google Trends Pilot Study.
Article in Cureus, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pandemic and precocious puberty - a Google trends study.World journal of methodology · 2023Article
- Seasonality of Hashimoto Thyroiditis: Infodemiology Study of Google Trends Data.JMIR bioinformatics and biotechnology · 2022Article
- COVID-19 and thyroid disease: An infodemiological pilot study.World journal of methodology · 2022Article
- Thyroid hormone alterations in critically and non-critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.Endocrine connections · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThere may be seasonality in thyroid diseases and internet search data may provide information on disease patterns. In this study we used data from internet searches on hypothyroidism to assess seasonality in this disease.
methodsWe collected worldwide data, as well as data for countries in the southern hemisphere (Brazil, South Africa, and Australia), covering 15 years, from Google Trends with the search term "hypothyroidism+thyroiditis (the commonest cause of hypothyroidism)" and "fatigue+weakness (the commonest symptoms of hypothyroidism)". We looked for periodicity in relevant internet searches by calculating autocorrelations; we also looked at the cross-correlation of internet searches for "hypothyroidism+thyroiditis" and "fatigue+weakness" and we compared the results by season with the Kruskall-Wallis test.
resultsThere was periodicity in the relevant internet searches and strong cross-correlations between internet searches for "hypothyroidism+thyroiditis" and "fatigue+weakness" worldwide and for South Africa and Australia. In both the northern and the southern hemispheres there were significantly more hypothyroidism-related internet searches during spring (p<0.05).
conclusionHypothyroidism was more popular in internet searches at springtime in the northern and the southern hemispheres. Thus, although this analysis is coarse, it seems that some seasonality can be inferred on hypothyroidism, taking into account the limitations of our approach.
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