ORIGINAL REPORT Self-rated health as predictor of medicine use in adolescence y Bjørn E. Holstein Mag Scient Soc 1,3 * , Ebba Holme Hansen MSc (pharm) 2,3 , Anette Andersen MD, PhD 1,3 and Pernille Due MD 1 1 Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2 Section for Social Pharmacy, The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Copenhagen, Denmark 3 FKL: Research Centre for Quality in Medicine Use, Copenhagen, Denmark SUMMARY Purpose To examine the association between self-rated health (SRH) and medicine use for four common complaints: headache, stomach-ache, difficulties in getting to sleep and nervousness, in a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Methods The study population comprised of all students in the fifth, seventh and ninth grade (mean ages 11.6, 13.6 and 15.6 years) in a random sample of schools in Denmark 2002, participation rate 90.6%, n ¼ 4.824. The students reported health problems, medicine use, social and psychosocial conditions in an anonymous and standardized questionnaire. The outcome measure was self-reported medicine use during the past month and the determinant was SRH measured by one item. Results There was an association between poor/fair SRH and medicine use for headache and stomach-ache. The associations remained statistically significant even after adjustment for frequency of the complaint for which the medicine was used: OR (95%CI) for medicine use for headache was 1.54 (1.10–2.14) among boys with poor/fair SRH and 1.50 (1.12–2.03) among girls with poor/fair SRH. A similar association was found between poor SRH and medicine use for stomach-ache for both boys (OR ¼ 3.41 (2.09–5.55)) and girls (OR ¼ 1.90 (1.36–2.67). Further, there was an association between poor/fair SRH and medicine use for difficulties in getting to sleep among girls, OR ¼ 2.66 (1.26–5.63) but not among boys. There was no association between SRH and medicine use for nervousness. Conclusion Poor/fair SRH is associated with medicine use for aches among Danish adolescents. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. key words — adolescents; children; drug utilization; medicine use; pharmaco-epidemiology; self-rated health Received 19 July 2006; Revised 7 October 2007; Accepted 8 October 2007 INTRODUCTION Medicine use for common ailments is a common behaviour among adolescents 1,2 and the prevalence of this behaviour has been increasing among young people in a range of countries without an equivalent increase in the prevalence of health complaints. 3,4 As medicine use may have harmful side effects it is important to study the factors which influence medicine use among young people. There are only few community-based studies on predictors of adolescents’ medicine use. Apart from variations with sex and age, 1,2,5 other socio- demographic factors have also been reported to be associated with young people’s medicine use: low parental social class, 6,7 high socio-economic status 8 and belonging to an ethnic minority group. 9 Subjective health is another potential risk factor for medicine use in youth: Ledoux et al. 10 showed that depressive symptoms were associated with drug use for sleep or pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety 2008; 17: 186–192 Published online 15 November 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pds.1529 * Correspondence to: Professor B. E. Holstein, Department of Social Medicine, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, P.O. Box 2099, DK-1014 Copenhagen K, Denmark. E-mail: holstein@socmed.ku.dk y No conflict of interest was declared. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.