Metabiota Inc., San Francisco, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 21;14(2):e0212507. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212507. eCollection 2019.
Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause microcephaly and other birth defects. We hypothesized that the Latin America Zika epidemic resulted in pregnant women and their partners adopting behavioral changes to limit risk, leading them to forego travel to Zika-affected locations. We evaluated this hypothesis by studying travelers' intent and behavior through Twitter data related to babymoon: a holiday taken by parents-to-be before their baby is born. We found the odds of mentioning representative Zika-affected locations in #babymoon tweets dropped significantly (Odds ratio: 0.29, 95% CI: 0.20-0.40) after the Zika-microcephaly association became well-known. This result was further corroborated through a content analysis of #babymoon tweets mentioning Zika-affected locations, which identified if the Twitter user was physically present in the Zika-affected locations. Conversely, we found a small but statistically insignificant increase in the odds of mentioning Zika-free locations from #babymoon tweets (Odds Ratio: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.97-1.27) after the Zika-microcephaly association became well-known.
孕妇感染 Zika 病毒可能导致小头畸形和其他出生缺陷。我们假设拉丁美洲 Zika 疫情导致孕妇及其伴侣采取行为改变来限制风险，从而避免前往受 Zika 影响的地区。我们通过研究与 babymoon 相关的 Twitter 数据来评估这一假设， babymoon 是指准父母在婴儿出生前的度假。我们发现，在 Zika 与小头畸形相关联广为人知后，#babymoon 推文中提到代表性 Zika 疫区的几率显著下降（优势比：0.29，95%CI：0.20-0.40）。通过对提到 Zika 疫区的#babymoon 推文进行内容分析，进一步证实了这一结果，该分析确定了推文用户是否实际出现在 Zika 疫区。相反，我们发现，在 Zika 与小头畸形相关联广为人知后，#babymoon 推文中提到无 Zika 地区的几率略有增加，但统计学上无显著意义（优势比：1.11，95%CI：0.97-1.27）。
