Investigating sarcopenia awareness using Google Trends

Sarcopenia is reported as an important health issue. This study investigates with Google Trends whether the clinical importance of sarcopenia is reflected in public interest in the disease. The study was performed between January and March 2020. Data were collected using Google Trends (worldwide). The compared topics were dementia, frailty, polypharmacy, osteoporosis and sarcopenia. A comparison of the topics revealed that “dementia’’ displayed the highest relative search volume followed by “osteoporosis” and “frailty”. The relative search volume of ‘‘sarcopenia’’ was very low and the lowest relative search volume was contributed to “polypharmacy”. In conclusion, despite the growing interest in the clinical and research community, it is still a relatively unknown topic for the general public. Taking in account the preventive potential of interventions against sarcopenia, it is important to increase the awareness among lay people. In this set-up, Google Trends could be an important tool to evaluate public interest in geriatric topics. It could help to convince policy makers that there is need for awareness programs on sarcopenia.