ArticleJMIR pediatrics and parenting2020
Trends in Web Searches About the Causes and Treatments of Autism Over the Past 15 Years: Exploratory Infodemiology Study.
Article in JMIR pediatrics and parenting, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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
4 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Using Social Media Data to Investigate Public Perceptions of Cannabis as a Medicine: Narrative Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Review
- Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review.PloS one · 2023Article
- Anti-ableism and scientific accuracy in autism research: a false dichotomy.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Consumer-Generated Discourse on Cannabis as a Medicine: Scoping Review of Techniques.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNinety percent of adults in the United States use the internet, and the majority of internet users report looking on the web for health information using search engines. The rising prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), uncertainty surrounding its etiology, and variety of intervention approaches contribute to questions about its causes and treatments. It is not known which terms people search most frequently about ASD and whether web search queries have changed over time. Infodemiology is an area of health informatics research using big data analytics to understand web search behavior.
objectiveThe objectives were to (1) use infodemiological data to analyze trends in web-based searches about the causes and treatments of ASD over time and (2) inform clinicians and ASD organizations about web queries regarding ASD.
methodsGoogle Trends was used to analyze web searches about the causes and treatments of ASD in the United States from 2004 to 2019. The search terms analyzed for queries about causes of ASD included vaccines, genetics, environmental factors, and microbiome and those for therapies included applied behavior analysis (ABA), gluten-free diet, chelation therapy, marijuana, probiotics, and stem cell therapy.
resultsGoogle Trends results are normalized on a scale ranging from 0 to 100 to represent the frequency and relative interest of search topics. For searches about ASD causes, vaccines had the greatest frequency compared to other terms, with an initial search peak observed in 2008 (scaled score of 81), reaching the highest frequency in 2015 (scaled score of 100), and a current upward trend. In comparison, searches about genetics, environmental factors, and microbiome occurred less frequently. For web searches about ASD therapies, ABA consistently had a high frequency of search interest since 2004, reaching a maximum scaled score of 100 in 2019. The analyses of chelation therapy and gluten-free diet showed trending interest in 2005 (scaled score of 68) and 2007 (scaled score of 100), respectively, followed by a steady decline since (scaled scores of only 10 and 16, respectively, in 2019). Searches related to ASD and marijuana showed a rise in 2009 (scaled score of 35), and they continue to trend upward. Searches about probiotics and stem cell therapy have been relatively low (scaled scores of 22 and 18, respectively), but are gradually gaining interest. Web search volumes for stem cell therapy in 2019 surpassed both gluten-free diet and chelation therapy as web-searched interventions for ASD.
conclusionsGoogle Trends is an effective infodemiology tool to analyze large-scale web search trends about ASD. The results showed informative variation in search trends over 15 years. These data are useful to inform clinicians and organizations about web queries on topics related to ASD, identify knowledge gaps, and target web-based education and knowledge translation strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.