Pandemic and precocious puberty - a Google trends study

Athanasios Tselebis; Lina Zabuliene; Charalampos Milionis; Ioannis Ilias

doi:10.5662/wjm.v13.i1.1

Pandemic and precocious puberty - a Google trends study

World J Methodol. 2023 Jan 20;13(1):1-9. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i1.1.

Authors

Athanasios Tselebis¹, Lina Zabuliene², Charalampos Milionis³, Ioannis Ilias⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, "Sotiria" General Chest Diseases Hospital, Athens GR-11527, Greece.
² Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University, Vilnius LT-03101, Lithuania.
³ Department of Endocrinology, Elena Venizelou General and Maternity Hospital, Athens GR-11521, Greece.
⁴ Department of Endocrinology, Elena Venizelou General and Maternity Hospital, Athens GR-11521, Greece. iiliasmd@yahoo.com.

Abstract

Background: Recent publications from several countries have reported that more young people (mainly girls) are experiencing precocious puberty (PP)/menarche during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic compared to the past. This variation is attributed to the stress of confinement, lack of exercise, obesity and disturbed sleep patterns. A common feature of the relevant papers, however, is the small number of reported cases of PP. Studies have shown that searches for diseases on the internet also reflect to some extent the epidemiology of these diseases.

Aim: To estimate, through internet searches for PP, any changes in the epidemiology of PP.

Methods: We assessed in Google Trends searches for 21 PP-related terms in English internationally (which practically dwarf searches in other languages), in the years 2017-2021. Additionally, we assessed local searches for selected terms, in English and local languages, in countries where a rise in PP has been reported. Searches were collected in Relative Search Volumes format and analyzed using Kendall's Tau test, with a statistical significance threshold of P < 0.05.

Results: Internationally, searches for three PP-related terms showed no noticeable change over the study period, while searches for eight terms showed a decrease. An increase was found over time in searches for nine PP-related terms. Of the 17 searches in English and local languages, in countries where a rise in PP has been reported, 5 showed a significant increase over time.

Conclusion: Over the study period, more than half of the search terms showed little change or declined. The discrepancy between internet searches for PP and the reported increase in the literature is striking. It would be expected that a true increase in the incidence of PP would also be aptly reflected in Google trends. If our findings are valid, the literature may have been biased. The known secular trend of decreasing age of puberty may also have played a role.

Keywords: Data collection; Epidemiology; Human; Methods; Puberty; Trends.