PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Li, Zhiwei AU - Fan, Yinguang AU - Su, Hong AU - Xu, Zhiwei AU - Ho, Hung Chak AU - Zheng, Hao AU - Tao, Junwen AU - Zhang, Yunquan AU - Hu, Kejia AU - Hossain, Mohammad Zahid AU - Zhao, Qi AU - Huang, Cunrui AU - Cheng, Jian TI - The 2022 Summer record-breaking heatwave and health information-seeking behaviours: an infodemiology study in Mainland China AID - 10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013231 DP - 2023 Sep 01 TA - BMJ Global Health PG - e013231 VI - 8 IP - 9 4099 - http://gh.bmj.com/content/8/9/e013231.short 4100 - http://gh.bmj.com/content/8/9/e013231.full SO - BMJ Global Health2023 Sep 01; 8 AB - Introduction Heatwave is a major global health concern. Many countries including China suffered a record-breaking heatwave during the summer of 2022, which may have a significant effect on population health or health information-seeking behaviours but is yet to be examined.Methods We derived health information-seeking data from the Baidu search engine (similar to Google search engine). The data included city-specific daily search queries (also referred to Baidu Search Index) for heat-sensitive diseases from 2021 to 2022, including heatstroke, hospital visits, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, respiratory diseases, mental health and urological diseases. For each city, the record-breaking heatwave days in 2022 were matched to days in the same calendar month in 2021.Results The 2022 record-breaking heatwave hit most cities (83.64%) in Mainland China. The average heatwave duration was 13 days and the maximum temperature was 3.60°C higher than that in 2021 (p<0.05). We observed increased population behaviours of seeking information on respiratory diseases (RR=1.014, 95% CI: 1.008 to 1.020), urological diseases (RR=1.011, 95% CI: 1.006 to 1.016) and heatstroke (RR=1.026, 95% CI: 1.016 to 1.036) associated with the heatwave intensity in 2022 (per 1°C increase). The heatwave duration in 2022 (per 1 day increase) was also associated with an increase in seeking information on cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (RR=1.003, 95% CI: 1.002 to 1.004), urological diseases (RR=1.005, 95% CI: 1.002 to 1.008), mental health (RR=1.009, 95% CI: 1.006 to 1.012) and heatstroke (RR=1.038, 95% CI: 1.032 to 1.043). However, there were substantial geographical variations in the effect of the 2022 heatwave intensity and duration on health information-seeking behaviours.Conclusion This infodemiology study suggests that the 2022 summer unprecedented heatwave in Mainland China has significantly increased population demand for health-related information, especially for heatstroke, urological diseases and mental health. Population-based research of real-time disease data is urgently needed to estimate the negative health impact of the exceptional heatwave in Mainland China and elsewhere.Data are available in a public, open access repository. Baidu Search Index records can be obtained from the official Baidu index website (https://index.baidu.com/). Daily ambient temperature and dew temperature data covering the same study period can be obtained from the ERA5-Land dataset (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/). Population data can be obtained from the WorldPop dataset (https://hub.worldpop.org/). The daily ambient mean concentration of PM2.5 and O3 can be obtained from the Tracking Air Pollution in China (TAP, http://tapdata.org.cn).