Prevalence and predictors of self-medication among University students in Ethiopia: A systematic review and Meta-analysis

Background: Self-medication is the global issue especially on those having access and education about medication irrespective of its side effect. It has a significant impact on resistance and medication-related complication. There are limited and inconsistent studies regarding self-medication practice in Ethiopia. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to estimates the pooled prevalence of self-medication and its predictors among Ethiopian university students. Method A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to assess the prevalence and predictors of self-medication among university students in Ethiopia. We searched literature from the databases of Medline, Hinari, Scopes, PubMed CINAHL, PopLine, MedNar, Embase, Cochrane library, the JBI Library, the Web of Science, Google Scholar and manual search. A total of nine studies reporting the prevalence of self-medication among university students were included. Data were extracted using a standardized data extraction format prepared in Microsoft Excel and the analysis was done using STATA 14 statistical software. To assess heterogeneity, I2 test was used since the included studies exhibit high heterogeneity, a random effect meta-analysis model was computed to estimate the pooled prevalence of self-medication. In another way, the association between predictor variables, and self-medication practice were examined. Result A total of 3513 study respondents from nine studies in Ethiopia published between 2010-2017 were included in the study. The result of our study reveals that a pooled prevalence of self-medication among university students was 45.61% (95%CI: 30.66, 60.57). Included studies have a sample size ranged from 250 to 548 with lowest prevalence (19.81%) of self-medication from University of Gondar, whereas the highest prevalence (77.01%) recorded in a study conducted at Arsi University. Conclusion Prevalence of Ethiopian university students was 45.61%, which is very high with the current global health problem with Anti-microbial resistance increment and other toxicity. In addition to this in this study, the association between self-medication and year of study was insignificant and statistically significant with the sex of participants and income level. Systemic review registration PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews: CRD42018099975