Trends of public interest in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from 2004 to 2022.

Context: Public interest in sport-related medical conditions is known to be affected by social media and pop cultural coverage. The purpose of this project was to assess the relationship between popular culture concerning chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and analyze of how often this topic was searched on the internet.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate deviations in public interest following player incidents of CTE and the effects that the media has had on public interest in CTE.

Methods: To determine our primary objective, we utilized Google Trends to extract the monthly relative search interest (RSI) in CTE between January 2002 and October 2022. To assess the increase in RSI following a major event, an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) to predict RSI from March 2012 was created through the end of the period, and calculated the differences between the actual and forecasted values.

Results: Data indicate that RSI increased over time, specifically following the release of the movie Concussion. The peak in RSI (100) over this timespan was following the release of Aaron Hernandez's autopsy results in 2017, which was 87.8 (95 % CI: 8.7-15.7) higher than forecasted, showing a 720.3 % increase in RSI. While research was published regarding CTE in 2005, the first major spike in search interest occurred after Junior Seau died in 2012. Increasing public interest in CTE continued when media exposure conveyed autopsies of former NFL players, the movie Concussion, and the release of The Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez. Given this increased interest in CTE, we recommend that media broadcasters become more educated on brain injuries, as well as the movement of Brain Injury Awareness Month and Concussion Awareness Day.

Conclusions: There has been an increase in public interest in CTE from 2004 through 2022 with surges following media releases of events involving NFL players. Therefore, physicians and media broadcasters must create partnerships to better educate the public about head injuries and the effects of CTE.