Use of traditional and complementary medicine for COVID 19 prophylaxis among healthcare professionals and students in Jordan: A cross-sectional study

Bulatova, Nailya; Younes, Sara; Arabiyat, Majd; Abukaff, Ahmad; Madanat, Sara; Alqudah, Eman; Hamati, Anoud; Halawa, Farah; Younes, Abdallah

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0276015

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This shows that topics about COVID-19 medication are embedded in a larger online cultural context [66]. Arguably, in other societal context where traditional medicines are respected and used (eg, Korea, Malaysia, Jordan, India) [67][68][69][70], there may appear separate topics about treatment plans or promotions of traditional medicines. With the results presented in the next section, we cannot definitively conclude whether social media topics about them are useful data or noise for infoveillance studies, but we propose that this could be reinspected in future studies.…”

Section: Topic Characteristics During China's Exit From the Zero-covi...mentioning

confidence: 96%

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Lan,

Ren,

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background After 3 years of its zero-COVID policy, China lifted its stringent pandemic control measures with the announcement of the 10 new measures on December 7, 2022. Existing estimates suggest 90%-97% of the total population was infected during December. This change created a massive demand for COVID-19 medications and treatments, either modern medicines or traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Objective This study aimed to explore (1) how China’s exit from the zero-COVID policy impacted media and the public’s attention to COVID-19 medications; (2) how social COVID-19 medication discussions were related to existing model estimates of daily cases during that period; (3) what the diversified themes and topics were and how they changed and developed from November 1 to December 31, 2022; and (4) which topics about COVID-19 medications were focused on by mainstream and self-media accounts during the exit. The answers to these questions could help us better understand the consequences of exit strategies and explore the utilities of Sina Weibo data for future infoveillance studies. Methods Using a scrapper for data retrieval and the structural topic modeling (STM) algorithm for analysis, this study built 3 topic models (all data, before a policy change, and after a policy change) of relevant discussions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. We compared topic distributions against existing estimates of daily cases and between models before and after the change. We also compared proportions of weibos published by mainstream versus self-media accounts over time on different topics. Results We found that Weibo discussions shifted sharply from concerns of social risks (case tracking, governmental regulations, etc) to those of personal risks (symptoms, purchases, etc) surrounding COVID-19 infection after the exit from the zero-COVID policy. Weibo topics of “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” of modern medicines correlated more strongly with existing susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model estimates compared to “TCM formulae” and other topics. During the exit, mainstream accounts showed efforts to specifically engage in topics related to worldwide pandemic control policy comparison and regulations about import and reimbursement of medications. Conclusions The exit from the zero-COVID policy in China was accompanied by a sudden increase in social media discussions about COVID-19 medications, the demand for which substantially increased after the exit. A large proportion of Weibo discussions were emotional and expressed increased risk concerns over medication shortage, unavailability, and delay in delivery. Topic keywords showed that self-medication was sometimes practiced alone or with unprofessional help from others, while mainstream accounts also tried to provide certain medication instructions. Of the 16 topics identified in all 3 STM models, only “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” showed a considerable correlation with SEIR model estimates of daily cases. Future studies could consider topic exploration before conducting predictive infoveillance analysis, even with narrowly defined search criteria with Weibo data.

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Section: Topic Characteristics During China's Exit From the Zero-covi...mentioning

confidence: 96%

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Lan,

Ren,

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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“…Benzer biçimde Gör ve Aşiret'in hemşirelerle, Bulatova ve ark.nın Ürdün'de sağlık çalışanları ile yaptıkları kesitsel bir araştırmasında, yeterli hidrasyon için bol sıvı tükettikleri görülmüştür. 29,30 Kristoffersen ve ark.nın Norveç, İsveç ve Hollanda ülkelerini kapsayan sağlık çalışanları ile yaptığı kesitsel bir araştırmada, COVID-19 pandemi sürecinin ilk 3 ayında sağlık çalışanlarının %62,8'i en çok doğal ilaçlar, vitaminler, mineraller ve diyet takviyelerini kullandıklarını belirlemiştir. 31 Bu yönüyle çalışmanın bu bulgusu literatürle benzerlik göstermektedir.…”

Section: Araştirmanin Eti̇k Yönüunclassified

Attitudes and Behaviors of Healthcare Workers with COVID-19 Disease Towards the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Descriptive Research

ACAR,

KAYA

2024

Turkiye Klinikleri J Nurs Sci

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“…Several reports of self-medication with natural products during the Covid-19 pandemic ood current literature regarding TM (Yimer et al, 2021), HM (Bulatova et al, 2022), CM (Xiao et al, 2020), T&CM (Ganguly & Bakhshi, 2020), CAM (Paudyal et al, 2022) and CIM (Lam et al, 2021). Commonly cited examples of natural products used are from plant origins such as eating pawpaw fruits (Bertuccioli et., 2022) ginger and green tea (AlNajrany et al, 2021), drinking alcohol, burning incense, wearing a garlic necklace, smoking cotton (Nejat et al, 2021), also from animal origin such as eating honey (AlNajrany et al, 2021), inhaling donkey droppings (Nejat et al, 2021) and drinking cow urine (Reihani et al, 2021) and from the environmental origin such as drinking concentrated salt water (Islam et al, 2021), hand washing with Alum water (Prakash et al, 2021), steam inhalation (Nuertey et al, 2022) and sun bathing (Islami et al, 2020;Ajibo, et al, 2020) among others.…”

Section: Reports Of Self-medication With Natural Products During Covi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Assessment of the Implications of Self-medication With Natural Products During Disease Outbreaks Among People in Developing Countries

Adebiyi¹

2023

Preprint

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Background: Self-medication with natural products during disease outbreaks is a major public health challenge in developing countries. Unlike self-medication with Over the counter (OTC) medication which receives significant attention in published literature, natural products have significant health implications, especially during times of disease outbreaks which are yet to be fully explored. Not backed by scientific evidence, the act can lead to a false sense of security among people, leading to a further spread of the disease amongst other implications. People need to be informed about self-medication risks and the professionally prescribed benefits of natural products and to seek appropriate medical care when necessary. Objectives: The purpose of this dissertation is to assess the implications of self-medication with natural products during disease outbreaks among people in developing countries. It tries to answer the following questions: (1) what is the state and quality of evidence in current literature (2) what are the gaps in literature (3) what are the determinants and contributing factors to self-medication with natural products during disease outbreaks among people in developing countries (4) what are the implications and (5) what are the possible solutions? Method: This dissertation was conducted using a modified systematic literature review methodology. The search protocol utilised for the search and selection of relevant materials from literature used in synthesising the findings of the study was documented using the PRISMA. The database search result was selected for review after the application of limiters, duplicate removals, exclusion and inclusion criteria, full-text review, and screening. The final selected articles were assessed for quality and bias using the 20 points system in AXIS critical evaluation tool. Data were extracted into themes using a Microsoft word table from which findings were synthesised. Findings: The initial database search yielded 1,683 reports from which 20 articles were selected for the review. Overall, 71.4% of the 14 articles assessed for quality and bias accrued 15 or more points on the 20 points system in AXIS critical evaluation tool, indicating that they were relatively of good quality. While all twenty (20) articles mentioned at least three or more factors or determinants of self-medication with natural products during disease outbreaks, only six (6) articles mentioned one or more implications, therefore demonstrating that there is a dearth in literature in this regard, which needs more exploration. The findings indicate that women are more likely to self-medicate with natural products than men, acquisition and ideological factors had the most influence on self-medication while the most common side effects were Diarrhoea, Stomach pain, Sweating, Headache, and Nausea/vomiting. Findings indicate that steam inhalation and herbal baths increased the risk of COVID-19 infection and people who self-medicate with natural products are more withdrawn and had less communication with their physicians. These people may suffer side effects not reported to their doctor and this might account for the paucity of reports on the implications of natural products used during disease outbreaks. Conclusion and implication of key finding:The use of natural products for self-medication during disease outbreak is a rampant practice in developing countries. While natural products may be more readily available, accessible, and affordable, there are potential risks and implications of natural products' use for self-medication. People need to be informed about this, encouraged to speak about their predicaments and seek appropriate medical care and support when necessary.

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Use of traditional and complementary medicine for COVID 19 prophylaxis among healthcare professionals and students in Jordan: A cross-sectional study

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Attitudes and Behaviors of Healthcare Workers with COVID-19 Disease Towards the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Descriptive Research

Critical Assessment of the Implications of Self-medication With Natural Products During Disease Outbreaks Among People in Developing Countries

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