Advances in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety

Abstract

Expected Information of Users for the OTC Drugs in Japan

Kiyomi Sadamoto, Yutaka Higashimata, Masaru Mizoguchi, Takahiro Yamanouchi, Noriyuki Kinoshita and Tsuyoshi Saeki

Background: The safety of self medication with OTC (Over the Counter) is of concern since the recent change in selling of OTC drugs in Japan. However, there have been few objectives and subjective evaluations for the safety of OTC drugs in daily use.
Method: A questionnaire about OTC drugs was composed, and distributed to users who were first informed about the purpose of the research.
Result: The most common item is instruction on the outer box, and instruction on container (bottle) is less than 20%. And less than 30% of users review the package insert.
Conclusion: From this study, we recognize that information of outer box is the most common information source for all users.