SynthesisSystematic reviews2025
Effectiveness of interventions designed to increase safe medicine disposal: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised trials.
Synthesis in Systematic reviews, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ecopharmacovigilance and Drug Disposal: A Survey of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Among Veterinary Healthcare Providers in and Around Gondar City, Ethiopia.Veterinary medicine and science · 2026Article
- From Policy to Practice: Community Pharmacists' Self-Reported Counseling Role in Pharmaceutical Waste Management.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDrug-related harm is a major cause of mortality, poisonings, hospitalisations and misuse. Reducing the availability of unused medicines is a component of ensuring medication safety. However, the current literature on how to increase the implementation of medicine disposal strategies needs to be clarified. This systematic review evaluated the effectiveness of strategies designed to promote medicine disposal.
methodsElectronic databases and clinical trial registries were searched from inception to 16th February 2024 without restriction for randomised trials of any interventions aiming to increase medicine disposal compared to any control. Medicine disposal could be done using any method as reported by eligible studies. The primary outcome was the change in the proportion of participants who disposed of unused medicines. Secondary outcomes were changes in patient (e.g. knowledge of disposal strategies), population (e.g. poisonings), environmental (e.g. preventing going to landfill) and economic (e.g. cost-effectiveness) outcomes. The original Cochrane tool was used to assess the risk of bias. Random-effects meta-analysis was conducted on the primary outcome, and a narrative synthesis was performed on secondary outcomes due to heterogeneity. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to assess the quality of evidence. PROSPERO registration: CRD42023491797.
resultsEighteen randomised trials were included (plus five ongoing, registered trials). All studies were conducted in North America, published from 2016 to 2023, targeted opioid analgesic disposal and included 5347 participants. Interventional strategies of providing disposal kits (risk ratio [RR] 1.42, 95% confidence Interval [CI] 1.13 to 1.79, moderate evidence), education alone (RR 1.47, 95% CI 1.03 to 2.09, low evidence), education plus reminder prompts (RR 2.51, 95% CI 1.30 to 4.83, moderate evidence) and education plus disposal kits (RR 2.00, 95% CI 1.03 to 3.87, moderate evidence) increased disposal compared to routine practice. Secondary outcomes were infrequently reported, including no studies reporting population-level (poisonings, hospitalisations) and environmental outcomes.
conclusionsThere is moderate quality of evidence supporting interventions of disposal kits, disposal kit and education and education with text reminders to increase the disposal of unused medicines compared to routine practice. The conclusions of this review should be interpreted following consideration on the quality of evidence and the number of trials conducted.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.