The association between COVID-19-imposed lockdowns and online searches for toothache using Google Trends

  1. Ahmad Sofi-Mahmudi
  2. Erfan Shamsoddin
  3. Peyman Ghasemi
  4. Mona Nasser
  5. Bita Mesgarpour

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Abstract

Objective

To assess the association between the lockdowns due to COVID-19 and global online searches for toothache using Google Trends (GT).

Methods

We investigated GT online searches for the search terms “toothache” and “tooth pain”, within the past five years. The time frame for data gathering was considered as the initiation and end dates of national/regional lockdowns in each country. Relative search volumes (RSVs) for online Google Search queries in 2019 was considered as the control. We analysed data after normalising based on the Internet penetration rate. We used one-way ANOVA to identify statistical difference for RSVs between 2020 and 2016-2019 for each country. A linear regression model was used to assess whether there is a correlation between RSVs in 2020 and gross domestic production, COVID-19 deaths, dentists’ density, YLDs of oral conditions, Internet access, lockdown duration, Education Index, and dental expenditure per capita.

Results

The results of worldwide RSVs for toothache and tooth pain also showed significantly higher values in 2020 compared to the previous four years. Of 23 included countries in our study, 16 showed significantly increased RSVs during the lockdown period compared to the same periods in the past four years. There was a statistically significant relationship between difference of RSVs means in 2020 and in 2016-2019 combined with percent of urban residency (B=-1.82; 95% CI: (-3.38, −0.26); p =0.026) and dental expenditure per capita (B=-0.42; 95% CI: (-0.80, −0.05); p =0.031) (R 2 =0.66).

Conclusion

Generally, the interest in toothache and tooth pain has significantly increased in 2020 compared to the last four years. This could implicitly reinforce the importance of dental care, as urgent medical care worldwide. Governments’ expenditure on oral healthcare and the rate of urban residency, could be mentioned as important factors to direct general populations’ online care-seeking behaviour with regard to dental pain.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.01.20157065: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    We used “toothache” and “tooth pain” as the primary search terms for all 24 countries as well as their translation into widely spoken languages for each country using Google Translate, other online dictionaries, and Wikipedia page for “toothache”.
    Wikipedia
    suggested: (Wikipedia, RRID:SCR_004897)
    We gave all search terms as “search term” in Google Trend’s search box except for the worldwide search that we used “toothache” as the disease with “tooth pain” as the search term.
    Google Trend’s
    suggested: None
    Statistical analyses were done using Python v3.6.7 (2018-10-20) (Python Software Foundation, Delaware, United States. http://www.python.org) on Google Colab.
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)
    http://www.python.org
    suggested: (CVXOPT - Python Software for Convex Optimization, RRID:SCR_002918)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.01.20157065v1 on medRxiv