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Review
. 2022 Jun 16;11(6):808.
doi: 10.3390/antibiotics11060808.

Prevalence and Correlates of Self-Medication Practices for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Oluwasola Stephen Ayosanmi  1 , Babatunde Yusuf Alli  2 , Oluwatosin Adetolani Akingbule  3 , Adeyemi Hakeem Alaga  4 , Jason Perepelkin  1 , Delbaere Marjorie  1 , Sujit S Sansgiry  5 , Jeffrey Taylor  1
Affiliations
Review

Prevalence and Correlates of Self-Medication Practices for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Oluwasola Stephen Ayosanmi et al. Antibiotics (Basel). .

Abstract

It has been suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in self-medication practices across the world. Yet, there is no up-to-date synthesized evidence on the prevalence of self-medication that is attributable to the pandemic. This study aimed to conduct a systematic literature review on the prevalence and correlates of self-medication for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 globally. The review was registered with the PROSPERO database. Searches were conducted following PRISMA guidelines, and relevant articles published between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2022 were included. Pooled prevalence rate was conducted using the Meta package in R. A total of 14 studies from 14 countries, which represented 15,154 participants, were included. The prevalence of COVID-19-related self-medication ranged from 3.4-96%. The pooled prevalence of self-medication for this purpose was 44.9% (95% CI: 23.8%, 68.1%). Medications reported by studies for self-medication were antibiotics (79%), vitamins (64%), antimalarials (50%), herbal and natural products (50%), analgesics and antipyretics (43%), minerals and supplements (43%), cold and allergy preparations (29%), corticosteroids (14%), and antivirals (7%). The prevalence of self-medication with antibiotics is concerning. More public health education about responsible self-medication amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics is required to mitigate the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance.

Keywords: COVID-19; home remedies; non-prescription drugs; pandemic; self-medication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram for the systematic literature review.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot for the pooled prevalence of COVID-19-related self-medication [6,11,12,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Medicinal agents used for COVID-19-related self-medication in reviewed studies.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Reasons for self-medication by number of studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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