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Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey
Background: Antibiotic resistance is a global threat. Scarce knowledge about safe and appropriate antibiotic use is coupled with frequent self-administration, e.g., in China. This repeated self-medication poses potential risk in terms of antibiotic resistance. Low-resource countries are facing an el...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664653/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28961191 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101152 |
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author | Gillani, Ali Hassan Ji, Wenjing Hussain, Waqar Imran, Ali Chang, Jie Yang, Caijun Fang, Yu |
author_facet | Gillani, Ali Hassan Ji, Wenjing Hussain, Waqar Imran, Ali Chang, Jie Yang, Caijun Fang, Yu |
author_sort | Gillani, Ali Hassan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background: Antibiotic resistance is a global threat. Scarce knowledge about safe and appropriate antibiotic use is coupled with frequent self-administration, e.g., in China. This repeated self-medication poses potential risk in terms of antibiotic resistance. Low-resource countries are facing an elevated burden of antibiotic self-medication as compared to developed ones. Thus, this study focused on evaluating the pervasiveness of antibiotic self-medication in 3 universities of Southern Punjab, Pakistan. Methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey in three government sector universities of Southern Punjab, Pakistan. The study was carried out with self-administered paper-based questionnaires. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 18.0 (IBM, Chicago, IL, USA). Results: Seven hundred twenty-seven students out of 750 (response rate 97%) with a mean age ± SD of 23.0 ± 3.4 years agreed to participate in the study. The proportion of females was slightly greater (52%) compared with males (48%), and almost one-third of the respondents (36%) were in their 2nd year of university. Out of the total, 58.3% practiced self-medication in the preceding six months, and 326 (45%) confirmed the use of antibiotics. Metronidazole was the most frequently self-medicated antibiotic (48%). Out of the total, 72% demonstrated awareness regarding the side effects of antibiotics. Diarrhea was the well-known adverse effect (38%). Forty-three percent affirmed having antibiotic resistance knowledge, and 30% knew that the irregular use of antibiotics would lead to increased antibiotic resistance. Conclusion: Despite having ample awareness of the adverse antibiotic reactions, self-medication among the university students was high and antibiotic resistance was a fairly unknown term. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5664653 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56646532017-11-06 Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey Gillani, Ali Hassan Ji, Wenjing Hussain, Waqar Imran, Ali Chang, Jie Yang, Caijun Fang, Yu Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Background: Antibiotic resistance is a global threat. Scarce knowledge about safe and appropriate antibiotic use is coupled with frequent self-administration, e.g., in China. This repeated self-medication poses potential risk in terms of antibiotic resistance. Low-resource countries are facing an elevated burden of antibiotic self-medication as compared to developed ones. Thus, this study focused on evaluating the pervasiveness of antibiotic self-medication in 3 universities of Southern Punjab, Pakistan. Methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey in three government sector universities of Southern Punjab, Pakistan. The study was carried out with self-administered paper-based questionnaires. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 18.0 (IBM, Chicago, IL, USA). Results: Seven hundred twenty-seven students out of 750 (response rate 97%) with a mean age ± SD of 23.0 ± 3.4 years agreed to participate in the study. The proportion of females was slightly greater (52%) compared with males (48%), and almost one-third of the respondents (36%) were in their 2nd year of university. Out of the total, 58.3% practiced self-medication in the preceding six months, and 326 (45%) confirmed the use of antibiotics. Metronidazole was the most frequently self-medicated antibiotic (48%). Out of the total, 72% demonstrated awareness regarding the side effects of antibiotics. Diarrhea was the well-known adverse effect (38%). Forty-three percent affirmed having antibiotic resistance knowledge, and 30% knew that the irregular use of antibiotics would lead to increased antibiotic resistance. Conclusion: Despite having ample awareness of the adverse antibiotic reactions, self-medication among the university students was high and antibiotic resistance was a fairly unknown term. MDPI 2017-09-29 2017-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5664653/ /pubmed/28961191 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101152 Text en © 2017 by the authors. 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Gillani, Ali Hassan Ji, Wenjing Hussain, Waqar Imran, Ali Chang, Jie Yang, Caijun Fang, Yu Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title | Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title_full | Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title_fullStr | Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title_full_unstemmed | Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title_short | Antibiotic Self-Medication among Non-Medical University Students in Punjab, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Survey |
title_sort | antibiotic self-medication among non-medical university students in punjab, pakistan: a cross-sectional survey |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664653/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28961191 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101152 |
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