Association of COVID-19-imposed lockdown and online searches for toothache in Iran

  1. Ahmad Sofi-Mahmudi
  2. Erfan Shamsoddin
  3. Peyman Ghasemi
  4. Ali Mehrabi Bahar
  5. Mansour Shaban Azad
  6. Ghasem Sadeghi

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Abstract

Background

Novel 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).

Methods

We 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.

Results

When 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.

Conclusion

The 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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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.06.20160515: (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
    It then provides a relative search volume (RSV), which is the query share of a particular term for a given location and period, normalised by the highest query share of that term over the time-series and presented on a scale from 0 to 100. 26 RSV is presented as “Interest” value in Google Trends website.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)
    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 10.1186/s12903-021-01428-z
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.06.20160515v1 on medRxiv