Seasonal variations and public search interests in Toxoplasma: a 16-year retrospective analysis of big data on Google Trends.

Background: This study aims to understand whether there is a seasonal change in the internet search interest for Toxoplasma by using the data derived from Google Trends (GT).

Methods: The present study searched for the relative search volume (RSV) for the search term 'Toxoplasma' in GT within six major English-speaking countries (Australia, New Zealand [Southern Hemisphere] and Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA [Northern Hemisphere] from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2019, utilizing the category of 'health'. Data regarding the RSV of Toxoplasma was obtained and further statistical analysis was performed in R software using the 'season' package.

Results: There were significantly seasonal patterns for the RSV of the search term 'Toxoplasma' in five countries (all p<0.05), except for the UK. A peak in December-March and a trough in July-September (Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA) were observed, while a peak in June/August and a trough in December/February (Australia, New Zealand) were also found. Moreover, the presence of seasonal patterns regarding RSV for 'Toxoplasma' between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres was also found (both p<0.05), with a reversed meteorological month.

Conclusions: Overall, our study revealed the seasonal variation for Toxoplasma in using internet search data from GT, providing additional evidence on seasonal patterns in Toxoplasma.