Factors associated with medicine use and self medication are different in adolescents

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:To estimate the prevalence of medicine use among high school students (14-18 years old) living in an urban area in Southern Brazil and the proportion who self-medicate and to explore the association between medicine use and demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral variables.METHODS:A school-based survey was conducted among high school students in the city of Maringá/PR, Brazil in 2007. The sample students were selected through two-stage random sampling. The sample included 991 students (54.5% females) from eight public and four private high schools. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Only medications used within the 15 days preceding data collection were considered. The independent variables studied were sex, age, socioeconomic status, living with parents, employment status, smoking habits, and alcohol use.RESULTS:The prevalence of medicine use among the adolescents was 55.8% (females = 64.3%, males = 45.7%, p<0.001) and 52.6% of this use represented self medication (females = 51.0%, males = 56.8, p = 0.21). The factors associated with medicine use were age, employment, and smoking, while the factors associated with self medication were male gender and employment. Chronic users did not tend to self-medicate.CONCLUSION: The data from this study demonstrate a high prevalence of medicine use and self medication; however, the variables associated with medicine use and self medication differed. Urgent strategies to promote the rational use of drugs in this population and their families are necessary.

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

“…This is similar to a finding by Moraes et al [28] which showed that increasing age (OR = 1.24), professional employment (OR = 1.21) were significant predictors of self-medication. Also, we revealed that the bigger the family size the more use of self-medication (OR = 2.04; 95% CI 1.84 -2.33).…”

The Determinants of Self-Medication: Evidence from Urban Vietnam

“…Apparently, there are some common factors associated with self-medication as indicated from the existing literature that are also found in this study such as employment status (de Moraes et al 2011), income (Awad et al 2005, schooling level (Awad et al 2005). Importantly, this paper shows that gender is not significantly associated with the probability of self-medication in Vietnam as other studies' findings, for instances de Moraes et al (2011) in urban Brazil, Awad et al (2005 in Sudan, and Garofalo et al (2015) in urban Italy.…”

The prevalence of self medication and the factors influencing its practice in pharmacy students of Karachi, Pakistan: A mix mode study

“…The major portion of the age group which is between 18-23 years is arguably very critical and crucial as most decisions by students in this age group are based on inclination which are devoid of any reinforced basis to support. 15 In terms of gender, majority of the respondents were the females (N=198, 84.3%) followed by males (N=37, 15.7%). This proportion of pharmacy students in terms of gender represent the current scenario prevailing in the country and such ratio is a hall mark of the medical and pharmacy institutions of Pakistan.…”

“…15 Out of these, 7 pharmacy teaching universities i.e. 3 public sector and 4 private sector are based in the city of Karachi with total approved yearly intake of 1160 undergraduate pharmacy students which accounts for 43.8% of total yearly intake of the country.…”