Google Search Patterns Could Track MRSA Spread

by Brandon Keim Wired Science

Records of Google searches could be used to track the spread of drug-resistant staph infections, filling a gap in existing surveillance for the bugs. With near-real-time, city-by-city information about the spread of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, public health experts may be better able to fight it.

“Potentially, we can get from Google a more timely measure of trends” than other surveillance systems provide, said epidemiologist Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago.

MRSA causes hard-to-treat skin infections that can turn septic, potentially invading organs and the bloodstream. It became widespread in U.S. hospitals during the 1980s, and in the 1990s a second strain emerged outside hospitals, spreading among healthy people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2007 that MRSA killed 18,650 Americans in 2005, or more people than were killed by AIDS.

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The methodology is similar to that used by Google Flu Trends, which caught researchers’ attention after flu symptom-related searches in Mexico preceded the 2009 swine flu outbreak. But whereas Flu Trends was seen as a potential source of early warning signs, better methods of MRSA surveillance are necessary to understand what’s already happening.

“If we had a comprehensive, linked electronic-health-records system that researchers had access to, we wouldn’t need it. There are systems like that in Scandinavian countries, where you can analyze disease factors in all kinds of ways. But you can’t do that in the U.S,” said Lauderdale.  Article, References