ArticlePloS one2013
Association of over-the-counter pharmaceutical sales with influenza-like-illnesses to patient volume in an urgent care setting.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using Over-the-Counter Retail Medication Sales to Detect and Track Influenza-Like Illnesses Including Novel Diseases: Surveillance Modeling Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Feasibility of using community pharmacy sales of over-the-counter respiratory products as a syndromic surveillance indicator: a pilot study from Sofia, Bulgaria.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Monitoring OTC drug sales for early detection of respiratory infectious disease outbreaks.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Distinct influenza surveillance networks and their agreement in recording regional influenza circulation: Experience from Southeast Michigan.Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2022Article
- Considering non-hospital data in clinical informatics use cases, a review of the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS).Informatics in medicine unlocked · 2022Article
- Performance of eHealth data sources in local influenza surveillance: a 5-year open cohort study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We studied the association between OTC pharmaceutical sales and volume of patients with influenza-like-illnesses (ILI) at an urgent care center over one year. OTC pharmaceutical sales explain 36% of the variance in the patient volume, and each standard deviation increase is associated with 4.7 more patient visits to the urgent care center (p<0.0001). Cross-correlation function analysis demonstrated that OTC pharmaceutical sales are significantly associated with patient volume during non-flu season (p<0.0001), but only the sales of cough and cold (p<0.0001) and thermometer (p<0.0001) categories were significant during flu season with a lag of two and one days, respectively. Our study is the first study to demonstrate and measure the relationship between OTC pharmaceutical sales and urgent care center patient volume, and presents strong evidence that OTC sales predict urgent care center patient volume year round.
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Registered trials
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