Prevalence Of Self-Medication With Antibiotics Among Residents In United Arab Emirates

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Abstract

Background

Self-Medication with antibiotics is a human practice and attitude in which an individual uses antibiotics to treat self-diagnosed symptoms. The self-medication with antibiotics is a common practice among residents in the UAE.

Purpose

The present study aimed to determine the prevalence of self-medication of antibiotics among residents in the UAE population to determine its associated risk factors and to increase awareness regarding the abuse of antibiotics.

Patients and methods

Three hundred and fifteen participants from different public places in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah,UAE received the validated questionnaire over the five-month study period. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS statistical software and the Chi-square test to assess the relationships between categorical variables.

Results

Of 315 participants, 31.7% (n=100) of the respondents reported the use of non-prescription antibiotics within a three-month study period. Self-medication with antibiotics was significantly associated with ethnicity and employment. The participants reported their previous experience with the disease (69; 21.9%), as the main reason for self-medication with antibiotics. The primary sources of antibiotics were those purchased from community pharmacies (70; 22.2%) and household (21; 6.7%).

Conclusion

Our study showed a high prevalence of self-medication behaviour even with the enforcement of the new legislation regarding the prohibition of selling antibiotics without a prescription. Therefore, there is a need to raise public awareness towards the safe use of antibiotics in our community.

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Most cited references 27

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Answering autobiographical questions: the impact of memory and inference on surveys.

N. BRADBURN, L J Rips, S K Shevell (1987)

Survey questions often probe respondents for quantitative facts about events in their past: "During the last 2 weeks, on days when you drank liquor, about how many drinks did you have?" "During the past 12 months, how many visits did you make to a dentist?" "When did you last work at a full-time job?" are all examples from national surveys. Although questions like these make an implicit demand to remember and enumerate specific autobiographical episodes, respondents frequently have trouble complying because of limits on their ability to recall. In these situations, respondents resort to inferences that use partial information from memory to construct a numeric answer. Results from cognitive psychology can be useful in understanding and investigating these phenomena. In particular, cognitive research can help in identifying situations that inhibit or facilitate recall and can reveal inferences that affect the accuracy of respondents' answers.

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Antibiotics in agriculture and the risk to human health: how worried should we be?

Qiuzhi Chang, Weike Wang, Gili Regev-Yochay … (2014)

The use of antibiotics in agriculture is routinely described as a major contributor to the clinical problem of resistant disease in human medicine. While a link is plausible, there are no data conclusively showing the magnitude of the threat emerging from agriculture. Here, we define the potential mechanisms by which agricultural antibiotic use could lead to human disease and use case studies to critically assess the potential risk from each. The three mechanisms considered are as follows 1: direct infection with resistant bacteria from an animal source, 2: breaches in the species barrier followed by sustained transmission in humans of resistant strains arising in livestock, and 3: transfer of resistance genes from agriculture into human pathogens. Of these, mechanism 1 is the most readily estimated, while significant is small in comparison with the overall burden of resistant disease. Several cases of mechanism 2 are known, and we discuss the likely livestock origins of resistant clones of Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecium, but while it is easy to show relatedness the direction of transmission is hard to assess in robust fashion. More difficult yet to study is the contribution of mechanism 3, which may be the most important of all.

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Why do general practitioners prescribe antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections to meet patient expectations: a mixed methods study

Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey, Melissa Yee, Christina Gaarslev … (2016)

Objectives To describe the role patient expectations play in general practitioners (GPs) antibiotic prescribing for upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). Methods Concurrent explanatory mixed methods approach using a cross-sectional survey and semistructured interviews. Settings Primary care GPs in Australia. Participants 584 GPs (response rate of 23.6%) completed the cross-sectional survey. 32 GPs were interviewed individually. Outcome measure Prescribing of antibiotics for URTI. Results More than half the GP respondents to the survey in Australia self-reported that they would prescribe antibiotics for an URTI to meet patient expectations. Our qualitative findings suggest that ‘patient expectations’ may be the main reason given for inappropriate prescribing, but it is an all-encompassing phrase that includes other reasons. These include limited time, poor doctor–patient communication and diagnostic uncertainty. We have identified three role archetypes to explain the behaviour of GPs in reference to antibiotic prescribing for URTIs. The main themes emerging from the qualitative component was that many GPs did not think that antibiotic prescribing in primary care was responsible for the development of antibiotic resistance nor that their individual prescribing would make any difference in light of other bigger issues like hospital prescribing or veterinary use. For them, there were negligible negative consequences from their inappropriate prescribing. Conclusions There is a need to increase awareness of the scope and magnitude of antibiotic resistance and the role primary care prescribing plays, and of the contribution of individual prescribing decisions to the problem of antibiotic resistance.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Infect Drug Resist

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Infect Drug Resist

Journal ID (publisher-id): IDR

Journal ID (pmc): idr

Title: Infection and Drug Resistance

Publisher: Dove

ISSN (Electronic): 1178-6973

Publication date (Electronic): 07 November 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 12

Pages: 3445-3453

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacotherapeutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Sharjah , Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

[2 ]Infectious Diseases and Anti-Infective Therapy Research Group, Sharjah Medical Research Institute and College of Pharmacy, University of Sharjah , Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Author notes

Correspondence: Abduelmula R Abduelkarem Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacotherapeutics Department, College of Pharmacy, University of Sharjah , P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesTel +971503655610Fax +971 055585812 Email aabdelkarim@Sharjah.ac.ae

Author information

Abduelmula R Abduelkarem http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4481-7779

Amna M Othman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5458-3657

Mohamed E El Zowalaty http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1056-4761

Article

Publisher ID: 224720

DOI: 10.2147/IDR.S224720

PMC ID: 6850897

PubMed ID: 31807035

SO-VID: d7d99469-0bd8-4607-a38b-163f61c26cda

License:

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms ( https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php).

History

Date received : 25 July 2019

Date accepted : 02 October 2019

Page count

Figures: 1, Tables: 5, References: 38, Pages: 9

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Prevalence Of Self-Medication With Antibiotics Among Residents In United Arab Emirates

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Abstract

Background

Purpose

Patients and methods

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Most cited references 27

Answering autobiographical questions: the impact of memory and inference on surveys.

Antibiotics in agriculture and the risk to human health: how worried should we be?

Why do general practitioners prescribe antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections to meet patient expectations: a mixed methods study

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