Tavares Aida Isabel
CEISUC - Centre for Health Studies and Research, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
CiBB - Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
J Pharm Policy Pract. 2025 Feb 3;18(1):2455068. doi: 10.1080/20523211.2025.2455068. eCollection 2025.
The aim of this work is to find the factors related to over-the-counter drug (OTC) consumption in Europe considering the differences in OTC market regulation.
A sample obtained from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) of 2019 is used to estimate a logistic regression. This sample includes 286,413 people from 26 countries. The outcome variable is derived from the question about the use of non-prescribed drugs. The independent variables include a set of predisposing, enabling, and need factors. Finally, countries with similar OTC retail market regulations are considered to control for heterogeneity in this regard.
The main findings show that OTC market deregulation is not strictly related to the share of OTC consumption. Despite some heterogeneity based on the type of OTC retail market regulation, there is a set of common drivers for its use by people across countries, such as age, gender, education, suffering from chronic disease or pain and being on a waiting list for medical treatment. When considering individual country and cluster of countries controls, there are some relevant results such as the role played by accessibility to pharmacies and OTC retailers; the positive correlation between OTC drugs and prescribed drug consumption, and the positive correlation between unmet health care needs due to financial household constraints and OTC drugs use.
There is no clear relationship between OTC drug use and OTC retail market regulation. There are several predisposing, enabling, and need factors that promote the use of OTC drugs. The relevant policies relate to the inequal access to OTC drugs across countries that may result from different market regulations and different consumption drivers.
考虑到非处方药（OTC）市场监管的差异，本研究旨在找出欧洲与非处方药消费相关的因素。
使用从2019年欧洲健康访谈调查（EHIS）中获取的样本进行逻辑回归分析。该样本包括来自26个国家的286,413人。结果变量来自关于使用非处方药的问题。自变量包括一组易患因素、促成因素和需求因素。最后，考虑具有相似非处方药零售市场监管的国家，以控制这方面的异质性。
主要研究结果表明，非处方药市场放松管制与非处方药消费份额并非严格相关。尽管基于非处方药零售市场监管类型存在一些异质性，但各国人群使用非处方药存在一组共同的驱动因素，如年龄、性别、教育程度、患有慢性病或疼痛以及在等待医疗治疗名单上。在考虑个别国家和国家集群控制时，有一些相关结果，如药店和非处方药零售商的可及性所起的作用；非处方药与处方药消费之间的正相关，以及家庭经济限制导致的未满足医疗保健需求与非处方药使用之间的正相关。
非处方药使用与非处方药零售市场监管之间没有明确关系。有几个易患因素、促成因素和需求因素促进了非处方药的使用。相关政策涉及不同市场监管和不同消费驱动因素可能导致的各国在获取非处方药方面的不平等。
