Parosmia and COVID-19 from the lens of google trends: infodemiology study

ABSTRACT

Parosmia is a subcategory of olfactory hallucinations and refers to a distorted ability to detect the right smell in the presence of a stimulus. The study aims to investigate the relationship between COVID-19 and parosmia by calculating the interest search volume of parosmia using google trends. Google trends was used to investigate trends in searches regarding parosmia and to track these search engine terms against the coronavirus outbreak in France, Sweden, the United States [USA], and Turkiye. The terms utilized in the search were "Parosmia" and "anosmia" and the data were collected between March 20, 2020, to July 25, 2021. Parosmia searches increase with time in all the countries and the correlation significance values were obtained for France, Sweden, USA, and Turkiye to be Rs 0.660, P-value 0.0038 "Moderate correlation";Rs 0.566, P-value 0.017 "Moderate correlation";Rs 0.842, P-value 0.0001 "Strong correlation";Rs 0.800, P-value 0.0001" Strong correlation" respectively. Relative search volume of parosmia and anosmia changed significantly with time may point out that there are some late COVID-19 complications that haven't been detected yet, and with the pandemic still ongoing, more complications could be discovered by analyzing the trends.Copyright © 2023, Istanbul Medipol University. All rights reserved.