ArticleScientific reports2025
Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use in persons aged 15 years and older in Uganda.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- COVID-19-related role disruption and alcohol use disorder risk among adults in South Korea.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Effect of food insecurity on hazardous alcohol consumption and psychological well-being among people with tuberculosis in Kampala, Uganda.Journal of clinical tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases · 2026Article
- Post-pandemic mental health: Understanding the global psychological burden and charting future research priorities.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In Uganda, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on substance and drug use at the national level has not been studied. Our study evaluated the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use among Ugandans aged ≥ 15 years based on a large, nationally representative survey. This quasi-experimental study used the Uganda National Household Survey data collected between June 2019 and November 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic as the primary exposure and outcomes as smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use frequency before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, measured on an ordered scale (none, less than daily, and daily). We used propensity score weighting to balance the exposed and unexposed groups, and analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on the outcomes using ordered logistic regression, adjusting for the propensity score weights. Sub-group analysis was conducted based on sex, residence, and age groups. We analyzed data on 34,312 participants (18,270 exposed vs. 16,042 unexposed) aged ≥ 15 years, with 53.8% male and 54.3% aged 25-59 years. Frequency of smoking (weighted proportional odds ratio [pOR] 0.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.07-0.25), alcohol consumption (weighted pOR 0.36, 95% CI 0.26-0.48), and substance use (weighted pOR 0.04, 95% CI 0.01-0.29) were significantly lower during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic levels. In sex-stratified analysis, smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use were lower during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. In rural areas, substance use was higher, but smoking and alcohol consumption were lower. In urban settings, the reductions in smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use remained consistent with the pre-pandemic levels. In Uganda, the frequency of smoking, alcohol consumption, and substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic was lower compared to the pre-pandemic levels. Future studies should examine if the reductions were sustained after the pandemic and whether modified restrictions can reduce alcohol consumption.
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