Letter to the Editor: 10-Year Evolution in Worldwide Usage of Anticoagulant Drugs

We aim to provide here an update with infodemiological data reflecting the global volume of Web searches for anticoagulant medications during the past 10 years, which is now known to reliably mirror their real-world usage. The results of our infodemiological analysis suggest that apixaban seems to be the most searched anticoagulant drugs all around the world, as well as in some specific and representative countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, thus likely mirroring its high worldwide usage. For Australia, this also mirrors usage data based on prescription data. The volume of worldwide Google searches for heparin has also increased over time, exhibiting a considerable peak after the 2020, in concomitance with the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As concerns the other drugs, rivaroxaban seems to be still widely used worldwide, as reflected by the conspicuous and constantly increasing number of Google worldwide searches. A modest increase can also be observed for edoxaban, more evident in the United Kingdom, and likely reflecting the lower number of medicinal agencies which have approved its usage all around the world. Dabigatran, finally, has remained by far the lowest searched drugs in the past 10 years, displaying a trend that seems to decrease further.