Sweetening the deal: an infodemiological study of worldwide interest in semaglutide using Google Trends extended for health application programming interface.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Off-label use of semaglutide for non-diabetic weight loss (which regulators have linked to social media promotion) created worldwide supply shortages. We evaluated worldwide semaglutide interest measured by online search behavior to gauge social media and conventional print media reporting's effect on search interest.

Methods

Using Google Trends Extended for Health (GTEH) multiple sampling, we retrieved regional online interest (ROI) for all countries and extracted timelines and top search queries for January 2021-August 2023 for countries with median ROI ≥ 20 using the "semaglutide" topic. We obtained semaglutide media reporting from the ProQuest database. We estimated the effect of media and within-country semaglutide interest on between-country interest with Gr

SUBMITTER: Raubenheimer JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11622965 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature