The Popularity of the Biologically-Based Therapies During Coronavirus Pandemic Among the Google Users in the USA, UK, Germany, Italy and France

• Main Authors: Elif Günalan, İrem Kaya Cebioğlu, Özge Çonak
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-05-01
• Series: Complementary Therapies in Medicine
• Subjects: Coronavirus; COVID-19; Functional foods; Immunity; Supplements; Misinformation
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229921000236

Object: The aim of this retrospective infodemiological study was to evaluate people’s interests in biologically-based (B-B) complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies such as herbs, foods, and supplements during the coronavirus pandemic via analysis of Google search engine statistics. Design &amp; settings: The category, period, and regions selected in the Google Trends were “health,” “15 January–15 May 2020,” in the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, Italy, and France, respectively. The most commonly searched herbs, foods and supplements (n = 32) during the pandemic were determined from a pool of keywords (n = 1286) based on the terms’ relative search volumes (RSVs) within the last five years. Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate associations between coronavirus-related parameters with each keyword’s RSV for each country. Selected keywords (n = 25) were analyzed using the gtrendsR package in the R programming language; the ggplot2 package was used to visualize the data, the Prophet package was used to estimate the time series, and the dplyr package was used to create the data frame. Results: Significantly strong positive correlations were identified between daily RSVs of the terms “black seed,” “vitamin C,” “zinc,” and “quercetin,” and search queries for “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” in the USA (Spearman’s correlation coefficient > 0.8, p < 0.05), and between the RSVs of the terms “vitamin C” and “zinc,” and daily search queries for “coronavirus” and/or “COVID-19” in the UK (Spearman’s correlation coefficient > 0.8, p < 0.05). Conclusion: Google Trends can be a beneficial tool for following public interest in identifying outbreak-related misinformation, and scientific studies and statements from authorities and the media play a potential role in driving internet searches.