Seasonality of cellulitis: evidence from Google Trends
1
Department of Infectious Diseases, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
2
School of Science, Chang'an University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Dermatology, Epidemiology, Global Health, Infectious Diseases, Public Health
- Keywords
- cellulitis, seasonality, Internet search, Google Trends
- Copyright
- © 2017 Zhang et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Seasonality of cellulitis: evidence from Google Trends. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3124v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3124v1
Abstract
According to our clinical experience, cellulitis is common in summer; however, very few studies have mentioned this trend. Using Google Trends, we analyzed the monthly data of Google searches for ‘cellulitis’ from 31 countries on six continents. Seasonality explained 34%-92% of the variability in search volume, with peaks occurring in summer months. The analyses offered new insights into the epidemiology of cellulitis on national and international scales. Clinical data are needed to validate the Internet search data.
Author Comment
Google search volume for 'cellulitis' shows significant seasonality trend in a number of countries, with peaks occurring in summer months.