BACKGROUND
Most common viral skin infections are not reportable conditions. Studying the population dynamics of these viral epidemics using traditional field methods is costly and time consuming, especially over wide geographical areas
OBJECTIVE
To explore the evolution, seasonality and distribution of vaccinable and non-vaccinable viral skin infections through analysis of Google Trends.
METHODS
Worldwide search trends from 2004 through May 2021 for viral skin infections were extracted from Google Trends, quantified and analysed.
RESULTS
Time series decomposition showed that total search term volume for warts, zoster, roseola, measles, hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), varicella and rubella increased worldwide over the study period while the interest for Pityriasis rosea and herpes simplex decreased. Internet searches for HFMD, varicella and measles exhibited the highest seasonal patterns. The interest for measles and rubella was more pronounced in African countries while the interest for HFMD and roseola was more pronounced in East Asia.
CONCLUSIONS
Harnessing data generated by web searches may increase the timeliness of traditional surveillance systems and strengthens the suspicion that the incidence of some vaccinable viral skin infections such as varicella, measles, rubella may be globally increasing.
CLINICALTRIAL
Ethics approval for this type of study was not required as none of the queries in the Google database can be associated with any identity and/or physical location, as specified in Google’s privacy policy (www.google.com/privacypolicy.html).