ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We would like to thank Fernando Gonzalez-Dominguez and Gilberto Vaughan for providing the chicken pox case reports from Mexico, and the Estonia Health Board, Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Control, for Estonian chicken pox case reports. KB would like to thank Mercedes Pascual, her lab, and Marisa Eisenberg for helpful comments. Jesus Cantu (research assistant, Princeton University) translated and categorized chicken pox searches from Mexico, Thailand, Australia, and the US.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

Bakker, Kevin M.

Helm, Barbara

Martinez-Bakker, Micaela Elvira

Stevenson, Tyler J.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

PubMed

Significance
          Disease surveillance systems largely focus on infectious diseases with high mortality, whereas less severe diseases often go unreported. Using chicken pox as an example, we demonstrate that Internet queries can be used as a proxy for disease incidence when reporting is lacking. We established that Google Trends accurately reflected clinical cases in countries with surveillance, and thus population-level dynamics of chicken pox. Then, we discovered robust seasonal variation in query behavior, with a striking latitudinal gradient on a global scale. Next, we showed that real-time data-mining of queries could forecast the timing and magnitude of outbreaks. Finally, our analyses revealed that countries with government-mandated vaccination programs have significantly reduced seasonality of queries, indicating vaccination efforts mitigated chicken pox outbreaks.</jats:p

Kevin M. Bakker

Micaela Elvira Martinez-Bakker

Barbara Helm

Tyler J. Stevenson

Crossref

Digital epidemiology reveals global childhood disease seasonality and the effects of immunization

Public health surveillance systems are important for tracking disease dynamics. In recent years,

social and real-time digital data sources have provided new means of studying disease transmission.

Such affordable and accessible data have the potential to offer new insights into disease epidemiology

at national and international scales. We used the extensive information repository Google Trends to

examine the digital epidemiology of a common childhood disease, chicken pox, caused by varicella

zoster virus (VZV), over an eleven-year period. We (1) report robust seasonal information seeking

behavior for chicken pox using Google data from 36 countries, (2) validate Google data using clinical

chicken pox cases, (3) demonstrate that Google data can be used to identify recurrent seasonal

outbreaks and forecast their magnitude and seasonal timing, and (4) reveal that VZV immunization

significantly dampened seasonal cycles in information seeking behavior. Our findings provide strong

evidence that VZV transmission is seasonal and that seasonal peaks show remarkable latitudinal variation.

We attribute the dampened seasonal cycles in chicken pox information seeking behavior to VZV

vaccine-induced reduction of seasonal transmission. These data and the methodological approaches

provide a novel way to track the global burden of childhood disease, and illustrate population-level

effects of immunization. The global latitudinal patterns in outbreak seasonality could direct future

studies of environmental and physiological drivers of disease transmission

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English

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We would like to thank Fernando Gonzalez-Dominguez and Gilberto Vaughan for providing the chicken pox case reports from Mexico, and the Estonia Health Board, Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Control, for Estonian chicken pox case reports. KB would like to thank Mercedes Pascual, her lab, and Marisa Eisenberg for helpful comments. Jesus Cantu (research assistant, Princeton University) translated and categorized chicken pox searches from Mexico, Thailand, Australia, and the US.Peer reviewe

Aberdeen University Research

Digital Epidemiology Reveals Global Childhood Disease Seasonality and the Effects of Immunization

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/118563/1/118563.pdf

Digital Epidemiology Reveals Global Childhood Disease Seasonality and the Effects of Immunization

Abstract

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Aberdeen University Research