Italian Wikipedia and epilepsy: An infodemiological study of online information-seeking behavior

Abstract

Wikipedia is the most commonly accessed source of health information by both healthcare professionals and the lay public worldwide. We aimed to evaluate information-seeking behavior of Internet users searching the Italian Wikipedia for articles related to epilepsy and its treatment. Using Pageviews Analysis, we assessed the total and mean monthly views of articles from the Italian Wikipedia devoted to epilepsy, epileptic syndromes, seizure type, and antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) from January 1, 2015 to October 31, 2017. We compared the views of the article on epilepsy with those of articles focusing on Alzheimer's disease, migraine, multiple sclerosis, syncope, and stroke and adjusted all results for crude disease prevalence. With the only exception of the article on multiple sclerosis, the adjusted views for the Italian Wikipedia article on epilepsy were higher than those for the other neurological disorders. The most viewed articles on seizure type were devoted to tonic-clonic seizure, typical absence seizure, tonic convulsive seizures, and clonic convulsive seizures. The most frequently accessed articles on epilepsy syndromes were about temporal lobe epilepsy and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The most frequently viewed articles on AEDs were devoted to valproic acid, carbamazepine, and levetiracetam. Wikipedia searches seem to mirror patients' fears and worries about epilepsy more than its actual epidemiology. The ultimate reasons for searching online remain unknown. Epileptologists and epilepsy scientific societies should make greater efforts to work jointly with Wikipedia to convey more accurate and up-to-date information about epilepsy.

Public Interest in Neurological Diseases on Wikipedia during Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic

“…Several other studies showed that interest in MS on Wikipedia was higher than the interest in other neurological diseases [8,9].…”

“…Some studies have shown that online interest in borreliosis and in West Nile virus disease correlates with their prevalence [7]. Most studies of neurological diseases did not show a correlation of web visitors' interest with the disease prevalence [3,8]. A study investigating Wikipedia visits related to the most common neurological diseases (MS, AD, stroke, epilepsy) did not find any relation between the incidence or prevalence of neurological disorders and the search volume for the related Wikipedia articles.…”

Innovative methods in health information behaviour research

“…Utilising the infodemiology approach to study temporal patterns and variations, Jonas Tana, Emil Eirola and Kristina Eriksson-Backa report on rhythmicity of health information behaviour. Although there are papers reporting the use of infodemiology in health-related information behaviour from medical perspectives, e.g., Brigo et al (2018) reporting on online information seeking related to the Italian Wikipedia and epilepsy, Hill et al (2011) on internet searches for H1N1 influenza, Zhang et al (2013) on the use of twitter to monitor physical activity and Blomberg et al (2019) on using a Facebook forum to cope with narcolepsy after pandemrix vaccination, there is very limited mention of infodemiology in the Information Science literature and hardly any in information behaviour research. Although a focus on the temporal is also not new in information behaviour research (Amitay et al, 2004;Combi and Shahar, 1997;Kimia and Ahmadi, 2018;Rahmi et al, 2019;Savolainen, 2018), it is certainly a novel addition when combined with infodemiology, and is an approach that could trigger interesting research.…”