title: Seasonality of Ankle Swelling: Population Symptom Reporting Using Google Trends.
abstract: In our experience, complaints of ankle swelling are more common in summer, typically from patients with no obvious cardiovascular disease. Surprisingly, this observation has never been reported. To objectively establish this phenomenon, we sought evidence of seasonality in the public's Internet searches for ankle swelling. Our data, obtained from Google Trends, consisted of all related Google searches in the United States from January 4, 2004, to January 26, 2016. Consistent with our expectations and confirmed by similar data for Australia, Internet searches for information on ankle swelling are highly seasonal (highest in midsummer), with seasonality explaining 86% of search volume variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Fangwei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: G Michael
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Allan
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Korownyk
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kolber
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Flook
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Harvey
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sternberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada scott.garrison@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Garrison
mesh_terms: D000842:Ankle; D059026:Diagnostic Self Evaluation; D004487:Edema / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D020407:Internet; D057386:Search Engine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012621:Seasons
keywords: Web browser/Google; edema; seasonal