Infodemiology of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in Iran using Google Trends

Abstract

Background:

 Prediction for diseases and health issues using Web information diffusion is the main aim in infodemiology studies. This study’s goal is to give a raw estimation of people with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) for all provinces in Iran.

 Material and Methods:

The data for this analytical cross-sectional study was collected using Google Trends (GTr). Three keywords of “Inflammatory Bowel Disease”, “Crohn’s Disease”, and “Ulcerous Colit” were searched through. The results were limited to the geographical region of Iran from 1/1/2010 to 12/31/2018. The retrieved data saved to a local drive in Excel and analyzed through SPSS software version 23.

 Results: 

Overall searches for IBDs showed a significant (P=0.0) trend during the studied course of time. There was no significant relationship between the number of searches, applied keywords, and various seasons. The largest number of searches for IBDs keywords came from Ardebil, Gilan, and East-Azarbaijan provinces.

 Conclusion:

This study revealed an increasing search rate for IBDs among Iranian clients from 2010 to 2018. The increased number of searches for Crohn’s disease compared with ulcerous colitis from 2016 onward is likely a wise estimation of disease spread in the country.