How Much has COVID-19 Contributed to Increase the Worldwide Consumption of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen? Evidence From an Infodemiological Analysis

We have planned an infodemiological analysis to establish whether the consumption of some representative NSAIDs has increased all around the world after the spread of COVID-19. We accessed Google Trends using the key words “paracetamol” (or acetaminophen) and “ibuprofen,” setting the geographical location to “worldwide,” and limiting our search to the past 5 years. A highly significant Spearman’s correlation was found between time and weekly Google Trends score of both paracetamol (r = .89; 95% CI, 0.87-0.92; P < .001) and ibuprofen (r = .78; 95% CI, 0.73-0.83; P < .001). Compared to the pre-COVID-19 period, the median (and interquartile range; IQR) weekly Google Trends score significantly increased by 54% for paracetamol (43 with IQR 34-47 vs 28 with IQR 26-31; P < .001) and by 24% for ibuprofen (31 with IQR 27-37 vs 25 with IQR 23-27; P < .001) during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Google Trends score of paracetamol remaining constantly higher than that of Ibuprofen (P < .001). The results of this infodemiological analysis confirm that NSAIDs consumption may have dramatically increased on a worldwide scale after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.