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QUESTION OF THE WEEK


New Study of Google Trends Data Highlights August and September as Key Hair Loss Search Months

Google Trends Data from United States Confirms August As Key Month of Hair Loss Searches

Google Trends data is powerful to understand the concerns and interests of certain groups and how this might change over time. Authors of a new study evaluated monthly Google Trends data for ‘hair loss’ in the United States from 1 January 2004 to 1 January 2020,

The authors’ data showed significant differences in search interest across various months. The month with the highest interest was August , followed closely by September and July. The lowest searches were conducted in April followed by February and December.



Comment

This study is interesting and is consistent with 5 other nice studies in the literature showing that July through September are the major months of shedding in humans.

This is certainly not the first study to try to correlated GOOGLE TRENDS data to shedding. A 2017 study in the British Journal of Dermatology  also supports that people are more concerned about hair loss in the Summer and Fall than in the Winter and Spring. Specifically, a study by Hsiang and colleagues looked at the Google Trends for the search term “hair loss” in Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.  Compared to the Spring, searches were 5.74 times more frequent in Summer and 5.05 times more frequent in Fall compared to the Spring.  Searches about hair loss in Winter were 2.63 times more frequent in Winter than Spring. Spring was a time of least entries related to hair loss.



REFERENCE

Buontempo M et al. Seasonal trends in hair loss: A big data analysis of Google search patterns and their association with seasonal factors. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2023 Jul 20.


Courtois et al.Periodicity in the growth and shedding of hair. Br J Dermatol, 1996 Jan;134(1):47-54.

Hsiang EY et al. Seasonality of hair loss: a time series analysis of Google Trends data 2004-2016. Br J Dermatol2018; 178(4):978-79

Liu C et al. Changes in Chinese hair growth along a full year. Int J Cosmet Sci . 2014 Dec;36(6):531-6.

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Randall and Ebling. Seasonal changes in human hair growth. Br J Dermatol 1991. Reinberg A et al. Circadian and circannual rhythms in plasma hormones and other variables in five healthy young males. Acta Endocrinology 1978; 88: 417-27

Smals AGH et al. Circannual cycle in plasma testosterone levesl in man. J Clin Endocrin Metab 1976; 42: 979-82.

Zhang et al. Comparative study on seasonal hair follicle cycling by analysis of the transcriptomes from cashmere and milk goats. Genomics 2019 Feb 16

 


This article was written by Dr. Jeff Donovan, a Canadian and US board certified dermatologist specializing exclusively in hair loss.



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