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Public health awareness of autoimmune diseases after the death of a celebrity

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Abstract

Autoimmune disorders impose a high burden, in terms of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Vasculitis is an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation and destruction of blood vessels. Harold Allen Ramis, a famous American actor, director, writer, and comedian, died on the February 24, 2014, of complications of an autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis. To investigate the relation between interests and awareness of an autoimmune disease after a relevant event such as the death of a celebrity, we systematically mined Google Trends, Wikitrends, Google News, YouTube, and Twitter, in any language, from their inception until October 31, 2016. Twenty-eight thousand eight hundred fifty-two tweets; 4,133,615 accesses to Wikipedia; 6780 news; and 11,400 YouTube videos were retrieved, processed, and analyzed. The Harold Ramis death of vasculitis resulted into an increase in vasculitis-related Google searches, Wikipedia page accesses, and tweet production, documenting a peak in February 2014. No trend could be detected concerning uploading YouTube videos. The usage of Big Data is promising in the fields of immunology and rheumatology. Clinical practitioners should be aware of this emerging phenomenon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Nicola Luigi Bragazzi

  2. Department of Medicine B, Tel-Hashomer, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Abdulla Watad & Howard Amital

  3. Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, Sheba Medical Center, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Abdulla Watad, Howard Amital & Yehuda Shoenfeld

  4. Department of Neurology, Franz Tappeiner Hospital, Merano, Italy

    Francesco Brigo

  5. Department of Neurological, Biomedical, and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Francesco Brigo

  6. Padeh and Ziv Hospitals, Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University, Zefat, Israel

    Mohammad Adawi

Authors
  1. Nicola Luigi Bragazzi
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  2. Abdulla Watad
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  3. Francesco Brigo
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  4. Mohammad Adawi
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  5. Howard Amital
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  6. Yehuda Shoenfeld
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Correspondence to Yehuda Shoenfeld.

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Bragazzi, N.L., Watad, A., Brigo, F. et al. Public health awareness of autoimmune diseases after the death of a celebrity. Clin Rheumatol 36, 1911–1917 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-016-3513-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-016-3513-5

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