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Aims: Social network characteristics may provide a novel non-pharmaceutical target for the prevention of depression. We investigated the temporal association of a broad range of structural and functional social network characteristics with incident depressive symptoms over 5 years of follow-up.Methods: We used data from The Maastricht Study, a population-based prospective cohort study (n=2,465, mean age 59.8±8.1 years, 49.1% women, 11,585 person-years of follow-up). Social network characteristics were assessed through a name generator questionnaire. Clinically relevant depressive symptoms (9-item Patient Health Questionnaire score≥10) were assessed at baseline and annually. We used multivariable logistic and Cox regression analyses, adjusted for sociodemographic, lifestyle and cardiovascular risk factors.Results: In cross-sectional analyses less emotional support for discomfort and with important decisions, and less informational support were associated with prevalent depressive symptoms (OR[95%CI] 1.19 [1.01-1.40]; 1.22 [1.05-1.43], and 1.20 [1.04-1.39], respectively). Every fewer 10% of family members was associated with prevalent depressive symptoms (1.11 [1.01-1.23]). In longitudinal analyses, less emotional support on important decisions was also associated with higher risk of incident depressive symptoms (HR[95%CI] 1.13 [1.03-1.25]). In addition, every fewer 10% of the network that was a family member was associated with a higher hazard of incident depressive symptoms (1.07 [1.01-1.13]).Conclusions: This study shows that less emotional support and fewer family members in the network were associated with higher risk of both prevalent and incident depression. The importance of emotional support and the role that family plays should be considered in treatment and prevention of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of 2019, an acute infectious pneumonia (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) began in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread around the world starting a pandemic. Globally, to date, there have been >118 million confirmed cases, including >2 million deaths. In this context, it has been shown that the psychological impact of the pandemic is important and that it can be associated with an increase in internet searches related to fear, anxiety, depression, as well as protective behaviours, health knowledge and even maladaptive behaviours. This is a systematic review. This review aims to collect, analyse and synthesise available evidence on novel data streams for surveillance purposes and/or their potential for capturing the public reaction to epidemic outbreaks, particularly focusing on mental health effects and emotions. At the end of the screening process, 19 articles were included in this systematic review. Our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on internet searches for mental health of entire populations, which manifests itself in a significant increase of depressed, anxious and stressed internet users' emotions. Novel data streams can support public health experts and policymakers in establishing priorities and setting up long-term strategies to mitigate symptoms and tackle mental health disorders. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the temporal correlation between Wikitrends and conventional surveillance data generated for Chikungunya, Dengue, Zika, and West Nile Virus infection reported by bulletin of Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità in italian, ISS). A cross-sectional study design was used. The reported cases of Dengue and Chikungunya were selected from July 2015 to December 2019. For West Nile Virus, the bulletins are issued in the period June–November (6 months) of the years 2015–2019, and for Zika virus, the data reported in the ISS bulletin start from January 2016. From Wikipedia Trends, we extracted the number of monthly views by users from the July 2015 to December 2019 of the pages Chikungunya, Dengue, Zika virus, and West Nile Virus. A correlation was observed between the bulletin of ISS and Wikipedia Wikitrends, the correlation was strong for Chikungunya and West Nile Virus (r = 0.9605; r = 0.9556, respectively), and highly statistically significant with P -values <0.001. The correlation was moderate for Dengue and Zika virus (r = 0.6053; r = 0.5888, respectively), but highly statistically significant with P -values <0.001. Classical surveillance system should be integrated with the tools of digital epidemiology that have potential role in public health for the dynamic information and provide near real-time indicators of the spread of infectious disease. • The temporal correlation between Chikungunya and West Nile Virus reported cases and Wikipedia's search trends was strong. • The temporal correlation between Dengue and Zika Virus cases and Wikipedia's search trends was moderate but highly significant. • The novel surveillance systems should be used more and in combination with traditional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]