ArticleBMC oral health2021
Association of COVID-19-imposed lockdown and online searches for toothache in Iran.
Article in BMC oral health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Awareness and intended behavioral responses to oral potentially malignant disorders: an image-based assessment among dental clinic attendees in Jordan.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- Assessing Google Searches for Toothache during COVID-19 Lockdowns.Medical journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran · 2023Article
- COVID-19 Pandemic: An Opportunity for Using Tele-Dentistry for a Better Dental Care.Prehospital and disaster medicine · 2022Article
- Spatiotemporal disparities in regional public risk perception of COVID-19 using Bayesian Spatiotemporally Varying Coefficients (STVC) series models across Chinese cities.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- Transparency of COVID-19-Related Research in Dental Journals.Frontiers in oral health · 2022Article
- Oral Health and Teledentistry Interest during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNovel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has impacted populations in many ways worldwide, including access to oral health services. This study aims to assess the association between lockdown due to COVID-19 and online searches for toothache in Iran using Google Trends (GT).
methodsWe investigated GT online searches for toothache within the past five years. The time frame for data gathering was considered as the initiation and end dates of the national lockdown in Iran. We performed one-way ANOVA statistical test to compare relative search volumes (RSVs) between the year 2020 and 2016-2019 for the whole country. Then we investigated the possible association of RSVs in provinces with dentists' density, prevalence of current daily smokers, Human Development Index (HDI), Internet access, and fluoride concentration in water using linear regression.
resultsWhen comparing 2020 with the previous four years, there was a rise of 2020 RSVs versus all previous years combined and each year (P < 0.001 for all of them). In the linear model for the year 2020, HDI (B = - 3.29, 95% CI: (- 5.80, - 0.78), P = 0.012) had a strong negative relationship with provincial RSVs. HDI mostly had strong positive relationship with provincial RSVs in prior years. Fluoride concentration (B = - 0.13, 95% CI: (- 0.24, - 0.03), P = 0.017) and dentists' density (B = - 0.04, 95% CI: (- 0.25, 0.17), P = 0.669) were also negatively associated with RSVs in 2020. These associations were mostly negative in the previous years as well. Internet access (B = 0.36, 95% CI: (- 0.38, 1.09), P = 0.325) and prevalence of daily smokers (B = 0.33, 95% CI: (0.13, 0.53), P = 0.002) were positively associated with RSVs.
conclusionThe RSVs for toothache in 2020 have increased due to COVID-19-imposed lockdown compared with the same period in the past four years. This increase was related to socioeconomic factors.
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