Objectives
At the end of 2019, an acute infectious pneumonia (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) began in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread around the world starting a pandemic. Globally, to date, there have been >118 million confirmed cases, including >2 million deaths. In this context, it has been shown that the psychological impact of the pandemic is important and that it can be associated with an increase in internet searches related to fear, anxiety, depression, as well as protective behaviours, health knowledge and even maladaptive behaviours.
Study design
This is a systematic review.
Methods
This review aims to collect, analyse and synthesise available evidence on novel data streams for surveillance purposes and/or their potential for capturing the public reaction to epidemic outbreaks, particularly focusing on mental health effects and emotions.
Results
At the end of the screening process, 19 articles were included in this systematic review. Our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on internet searches for mental health of entire populations, which manifests itself in a significant increase of depressed, anxious and stressed internet users’ emotions.
Conclusions
Novel data streams can support public health experts and policymakers in establishing priorities and setting up long-term strategies to mitigate symptoms and tackle mental health disorders.
Jails may not seem like the ideal place to fight sedentary behavior, but, in any case, health promotion can occur within its walls. The heterogeneity of Italian jails, and particularly relative PEAs therein (areas had different characteristics between jails), suggests that such spaces should be regulated or well defined. Furthermore, the implement of training schedules could be done in a standardized way. Despite this heterogeneity both the physical and mental components of inmates' quality of life were associated to a high level of physical activity.
The burden of pancreatic cancer varies greatly across countries, with the number of deaths, incident cases, and disability-adjusted life years more than doubling in recent years, and with high-income countries having the highest incidence and mortality rates. We conducted this systematic review with meta-analysis with the goal of summarizing the current evidence on dietary fiber intake and its role in reducing the risk of pancreatic cancer, given the importance of identifying risk factors. This systematic review followed the guidelines of the Cochrane Collaboration and the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020. The structured literature search was conducted on PubMed/Medline and Scopus, combining free text words and medical subject headings. Our review contained 18 records at the end of the process. Our results show that dietary fiber intake reduces the risk of pancreatic cancer. When the analysis was differentiated according to the type of fiber considered, sub-grouped by gender (reduction of around 60% among women), and when case-control studies were conducted, the strength of the association increased. Clinicians and policymakers should improve interventions to raise the population’s awareness regarding the consumption of high-fiber diets, both in practice and in terms of public health policy.
We obtained data from Google Trends and Wikipedia in order to assess whether an analysis of Internet searches could provide information on the Internet users’ behaviour/interest in diets. Differences in seasonality, year and before/during COVID-19 pandemic were assessed. From Wikipedia, we extracted the number of times a page is viewed by users, aggregated on monthly and seasonal bases. We also used Google Trends to evaluate the frequency of the users’ web searches. The Mediterranean diet was the most frequently (33.9%), followed by the pescatarian diet (9.0%). Statistically, significant seasonal differences were found for the Mediterranean, vegetarian, Atkins, Scarsdale, and zone diets and pescetarianism. The most commonly searched diet and consequent diet-related queries on Google resulted to be: Dukan diet, Dukan and weight loss. Ketogenic, FODMAP and intermittent fasting diets were statistically more frequently searched during the pandemic compared with before. Our data show a different trend of searches based on the seasonality, year and the pandemic. These data could be useful for scientists, practitioners and policy makers because they can inform educational campaigns via the Internet, especially in periods when the population is more receptive.
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