Introduction

COVID-19 infection was accompanied by otologic symptoms, a pattern that was captured early by Google Trends. The objective of this study is to investigate searches for otologic symptoms and identify correlations with the pandemic onset.

Materials and methods

Search interest for otologic symptoms was gathered using Google Trends from two years before and two years following the pandemic start date. A two-tailed Mann-Whitney U test was used to identify significant changes and effect size.

Results

In total, search interest for 14 terms was collected, with significant changes identified in 11. Six terms showed increased search interest, with the most significant rises observed for headache (r=0.589, p<0.001), dizziness (r=0.554, p<0.001), and tinnitus (r=0.410, p<0.001). Search interest decreased for five terms, with the most notable declines found in searches for migraine headache (r=0.35, p<0.001) and phonophobia (r=0.22, p=0.002). No significant changes were seen in ear pressure (p=0.142), neck pain (p=0.935), and sudden hearing loss (p=0.863) searches.

Conclusion

COVID-19 infection is often accompanied otologic symptoms and holds a diagnostic role. Fluctuating search interest may be attributed to a true increase in cases, media trends, or people's desires to stay informed. Google Trends robustly captured trends in search interest and presented itself as a valuable epidemiological tool.

Background: Migraine is a prevalent episodic brain disorder known for recurrent attacks of unilateral headaches, accompanied by complaints of photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, and vomiting. Two main categories of migraine are migraine with aura (MA) and migraine without aura (MO). Main body: Early twin and population studies have shown a genetic basis for these disorders, and efforts have been invested since to discern the genes involved. Many techniques, including candidate-gene association studies, loci linkage studies, genome-wide association, and transcription studies, have been used for this goal. As a result, several genes were pinned with concurrent and conflicting data among studies. It is important to understand the evolution of techniques and their findings. Conclusions: This review provides a chronological understanding of the different techniques used from the dawn of migraine genetic investigations and the genes linked with the migraine subtypes.