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Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines

The public generally believes OTC medicines to be helpful for treating minor ailments. From a survey point of view, that position often originates from feedback obtained when these medicines are considered as one broad category. The objective of the study was to assess the properties of 15 categorie...

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Autores principales: Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon, Ayosanmi, Stephen, Sansgiry, Sujit S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10037583/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36961029
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy11020051
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author Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon
Ayosanmi, Stephen
Sansgiry, Sujit S.
author_facet Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon
Ayosanmi, Stephen
Sansgiry, Sujit S.
author_sort Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon
collection PubMed
description The public generally believes OTC medicines to be helpful for treating minor ailments. From a survey point of view, that position often originates from feedback obtained when these medicines are considered as one broad category. The objective of the study was to assess the properties of 15 categories of agents across three dimensions—effectiveness, safety, and familiarity. Data were gathered via an online non-random survey in one Canadian province, where residents were asked to consider 15 OTC medicine categories in terms of those dimensions. Five hundred and seventy-five completed surveys were obtained out of 3000 sent. On the 10-point effectiveness scale, values ranged from 5.1 (Athlete’s foot cream) to 7.3 (headache medicine). For safety, the medicines were closely grouped (6.0 to 7.4). Cough syrups for children were perceived as less safe than those for adults. There was a trend in that, as product familiarity grew, so did impressions of safety and effectiveness. The results support other reports where OTC medicines are described as safe and effective, although safety ratings were not particularly high. Responders considered these medicines to generally be higher in safety than effectiveness.
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spelling pubmed-100375832023-03-25 Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon Ayosanmi, Stephen Sansgiry, Sujit S. Pharmacy (Basel) Article The public generally believes OTC medicines to be helpful for treating minor ailments. From a survey point of view, that position often originates from feedback obtained when these medicines are considered as one broad category. The objective of the study was to assess the properties of 15 categories of agents across three dimensions—effectiveness, safety, and familiarity. Data were gathered via an online non-random survey in one Canadian province, where residents were asked to consider 15 OTC medicine categories in terms of those dimensions. Five hundred and seventy-five completed surveys were obtained out of 3000 sent. On the 10-point effectiveness scale, values ranged from 5.1 (Athlete’s foot cream) to 7.3 (headache medicine). For safety, the medicines were closely grouped (6.0 to 7.4). Cough syrups for children were perceived as less safe than those for adults. There was a trend in that, as product familiarity grew, so did impressions of safety and effectiveness. The results support other reports where OTC medicines are described as safe and effective, although safety ratings were not particularly high. Responders considered these medicines to generally be higher in safety than effectiveness. MDPI 2023-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10037583/ /pubmed/36961029 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy11020051 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Taylor, Jeffrey Gordon
Ayosanmi, Stephen
Sansgiry, Sujit S.
Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title_full Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title_fullStr Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title_full_unstemmed Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title_short Consumer Impressions of the Safety and Effectiveness of OTC Medicines
title_sort consumer impressions of the safety and effectiveness of otc medicines
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10037583/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36961029
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy11020051
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