ArticleBMJ open2016
Investigation of social, demographic and health variations in the usage of prescribed and over-the-counter medicines within a large cohort (South Yorkshire, UK).
Article in BMJ open, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Over-the-counter drug consumption and related factors, evidence from the European Health Interview Survey.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2025Article
- Over-the-Counter Medication Use among Parents in Saudi Arabia.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Consumption of Non-Prescribed Drugs in Portugal During the Pandemic in 2021.International journal of public health · 2023Observational
- Factors Contributing to Self-Medication and Consumption of Non-Prescribed Drugs in Portugal.International journal of public health · 2022Article
- The Effects of Health Anxiety and Litigation Potential on Symptom Endorsement, Cognitive Performance, and Physiological Functioning in the Context of a Food and Drug Administration Drug Recall Announcement.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The relationship between patients' income and education and their access to pharmacological chronic pain management: A scoping review.Canadian journal of pain = Revue canadienne de la douleur · 2022Article
- The association between obesity and quality of life: a retrospective analysis of a large-scale population-based cohort study.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Using machine learning to investigate self-medication purchasing in England via high street retailer loyalty card data.PloS one · 2018Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesPrescribed and over-the-counter (non-prescribed) medicine usage has increased in recent years; however, there has been less investigation of the socioeconomic predictors of use. This has been due to a lack of data, especially for over-the-counter medicines. Our study aims to understand how prescribed and over-the-counter medicine patterns vary by demographic, social and health characteristics within a large population cohort.
designCross-sectional data analysis.
settingSouth Yorkshire, UK.
participants27 806 individuals from wave 1 of the Yorkshire Health Study (2010-2012). MEASURES: Individuals self-reported each medicine they were taking and whether each was prescribed or not. The medicines were grouped into 14 categories (eg, cardiovascular system, infection, contraception). Negative binomial regression models were used to analyse the count of medicine usage. We included demographic (age, gender, ethnicity), social (education), health-related (body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity) factors and chronic health conditions (eg, stroke, anxiety and heart disease) in our analyses.
results49% of men and 62% of women were taking medicine with the majority of this prescribed (88% and 83%, respectively). Health conditions were found to be positively associated with prescribed medicine usage, but mixed in their associated with over-the-counter medicines. Educational attainment was negatively associated with prescribed and positively associated with over-the-counter usage.
conclusionsOur study addresses a dearth of evidence to provide new insights into how behaviours in medicine usage vary by demographic, social and health-related factors. Differences in over-the-counter medicine usage by educational attainment may help our understanding of the determinants of health inequalities.
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