Pattern of self-medication with analgesics among Iranian University students in central Iran

Abstract

Background:Self-medication is defined as the use of drugs for the treatment of self-diagnosed disorders. It is influenced by factors such as education, family, society, law, availability of drugs and exposure to advertisements. This study was performed to evaluate self-medication with analgesics and its pattern among different groups of Iranian University Students.Materials and Methods:A randomized, cross-sectional, multicenter study was conducted from December 2009 to February 2010. The target population of this study was 564 students out of 10,000 students attending four medical and non-medical science universities in Qom state. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 16, and analysis was conducted with descriptive analysis procedures.Results:76.6% of the students had used analgesics in self-medication in the previous 3 months. The frequency of analgesic use in the study period was once in 19.2% of the participants, twice in 22.2%, three times in 16.3% and more than three times in 35.5% of the participants, although 6.8% of them were not sure when they were used. Of all the respondents, 49.8% reported headache as the problem. This was the most common problem, after which came Dysmenorrhea,headache and stomach ache. Bone and joint pains were other problems that led to the use of analgesics. The most commonly used source of information for self-medication with analgesics was advice from friends and family (54.7%), previously prescribed medications (30.1%), their medical knowledge (13.3%) and recommendation of a pharmacist (1.9%).Conclusion:Self-medication with analgesics is very high among Iranian students in Qom city. This could be an index for other parts of the Iranian community. Because the source of information about analgesics is inappropriate, we would recommend education courses about analgesics and self-medication on the radio and television for the entire population.

Self-Medication among Adults in Minia, Egypt: A Cross Sectional Community-Based Study

“…However we found no significant association between being covered by health insurance and practicing self-medication, this was in line with study conducted by Sarahroodi et al (2012) who reported no statistically significant difference between self-medication and having or not having medical insurance [29]. On contrary, Widayati et al (2011) [26] found that Indonesian who had perceived access to health care (having insurance) were 1.47 times more likely to selfmedicate than those who reported no access to health care (OR = 1.47).…”

Knowledge and attitude of analgesics use among Saudi population: A cross-sectional study

“…This agrees with results from previous studies. [14,16] there is another study in Germany shown the opposite result. [17] Most of the analgesics user in this study are taking one tablet mostly for minor pains such as fever and headache which shows lack of information about appropriate adult dose which agrees with a Norwegian study which says that their respondents were using a lower dose of OTC drugs and had not exceeded the maximum dose.…”

“…[23,29] While the study in Iran that shows the most common source of information relied on by respondents was friends and family or advice from other people (54.7%). [16] Our study has strength and weakness. The strengths include the use of a large area of the general population; it is not limited to the specific cities or level of education like other studies.…”

Self-medication among medical student in King Abdul-Aziz University

“…14,18 We found that paracetamol and NSAIDs with percentage of (23.3%) and (4.4%) respectively compared to other drug classes are the most common used medications in all medical years especially 4 th year medical students and this agrees with GCMS students, North West Ethiopia Egypt, Iranian college students in Qom city previous KAU study Western Nepal. 13,[15][16][17] Our results shows that antianxiety and opioids are the least used drugs and this could be linked to the knowledge of the risk of the side effects of these drugs, the cost, and the strict system in purchasing these kind of drugs.…”