Google trend analysis of climatic zone based Indian severe seasonal sensitive population

• Published in: BMC public health 2020-03, Vol.20 (1), p.306-306, Article 306
• Main Authors: Patel, Jai Chand, Khurana, Pankaj, Sharma, Yogendra Kumar, Kumar, Bhuvnesh, Sugadev, Ragumani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Allergy; Asthma; Climate; Cold; Comorbid; Comorbidity; Correlation analysis; Data collection; Datasets; Diseases; Environmental factors; Environmental health; Fibrosis; Google trends; Humidity; Hypertension; Medical research; Obesity; Online searching; Periodicity; Population; Public health; Public health movements; Rain; Seasonal sensitive population; Seasonal variations; Seasonal variations (Diseases); Statistics; Studies; Summer; Time; Trend analysis; Trends; Web analytics; Winter
• ISSN: 1471-2458; 1471-2458
• DOI: 10.1186/s12889-020-8399-0

Our earlier Google Trend (GT) Analytics study reported that the worldwide human population severely subject to four seasonal (sensitive) comorbid lifestyle diseases (SCLD) such as asthma, obesity, hypertension and fibrosis. The human population subject to seasonal variability in these four diseases activity referred as "severe seasonal sensitive population". In India, the estimated burden of these four seasonal diseases is more than 350 million as on the year 2018. It is a growing crisis for India with a projected disease burden of 500 million in the year 2025. This study was aimed to decipher the genuine SCLD seasonal trends in the entire Indian population using GT and validate these trends in Indian climatic zones. GT is used to study the temporal trends in web search using weekly Relative Search Volume (RSV) for the period 2004 to 2017. The relative search volume (RSV) of the four-severe seasonal comorbid diseases namely Asthma, Hypertension, Obesity and Fibrosis were collected with and without obesity as the reference. The RSV were collected using the GT selection options as (i) Whole India (ii) Jammu and Kashmir (Cold zone) (iii) Rajasthan (Hot and Dry zone) (iii) West Bengal (Hot and Humid zone) and (iv) Uttar Pradesh state (Composite zone). The time series analysis was carried out to find seasonal patterns, comorbidity, trends and periodicity in the entire India and four of its states (zones). Our analysis of entire India (2004-2017) revealed high significant seasonal patterns and comorbidity in all the four diseases of SCLD. The positive tau values indicated strong positive seasonal trends in the SCLD throughout the period (Table). The auto correlation analysis revealed that these diseases were subjected to 3, 4 and 6 months period seasonal variations. Similar seasonal patterns and trends were also observed in all the four Indian temperature zones. Overall study indicated that SCLD seasonal search patterns and trends are highly conserved in India even in drastic Indian climatic zones. The clinical outcome arise out of these observations could be of immense significance in handling the major chronic life style diseases asthma, hypertension, obesity and fibrosis. The possible strong comorbid relationship among asthma, hypertension, obesity and fibrosis may be useful to segregate Indian seasonal sensitive population. In disease activity-based chronotherapy, the search interest of segment of the population with access to Internet may be used as an indi