Thrita. 2020 June; 9(1):e105794. Published online 2020 August 22. doi: 10.5812/thrita.105794. Research Article A Cross-Sectional Study of Antibiotic Self-Medication Fatemeh Mousavi 1 , Parisa Shojaei 1, * , Azadeh Nazemi 2 and Atefe Dadashi 3 1 Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Tehran Medical Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering and IT, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran 3 Science and Research, Azad University, Tehran, Iran * Corresponding author: Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Tehran Medical Science Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. Email: shojaee7@gmail.com Received 2020 May 27; Accepted 2020 July 10. Abstract Objectives: This research has been conducted to study antibiotic self-medication, prevalence, and reasons. Methods: A questionnaire containing 30 comprehensive questions in terms of the experience of antibiotic self-medication was prepared. In this cross-sectional study, data were analyzed using analytical statistics bases on chi-square and logistic regression. Results: The results showed that 61.3% of the participants were self-antibiotic users. There was a significant difference only between gender and self-medication such that self-medication in males was more than females (P value = 0.027). Conclusions: Self-medication of antibiotics is almost high and requires more information about the side effects of these drugs in order to promote rational and physically prescribed use. Keywords: Self-Medication, Antibiotics, Knowledge, Community 1. Background Globally, antibiotics are one of the most commonly used medicines, specifically in developing countries where infectious diseases are still the most common cause of death (1). Self-medication refers to any attempt for self- treatment after self-diagnosis of the health issue or medi- cal problem by taking medicines without any professional advice or authorized prescriptions (2). This type of medi- cal solution is pervasive in most parts of the world, and 50% of all used antibiotics are purchased without any prescrip- tion (3). Antibiotic self-medication may lead to health haz- ards in developing countries that face poverty, inaccessi- bility, lack of medical professionals, poor quality of health equipment, irregular distribution of medicines, and de- creasing patients’ trust in physicians (4). Considering the rapid growth of microbial resistance to antibiotics (5-7), the World Health Organization (WHO) has begun imple- menting a global program entitled Microbial Resistance to Microorganisms in 2001 (8). Despite these WHO activities, the use of antibiotics without prescriptions is increasing in developing countries (9). Taking an inappropriate antibiotic and improper an- tibiotic usage may cause (1) microbial resistance, (2) spreading of some diseases such as pseudo-membranous colitis, (3) economically negative impact (8). Researchers previously found that self-treatment with antibiotics had a significant relationship with age, income, education, and patient satisfaction of former effective usage (10, 11). It can be the result of patients’ experience of the effectiveness of previous treatment (10). Increasing public knowledge of antibiotic treatment plays an important role in decreasing antibiotic resistance (12, 13). General awareness of antibi- otic resistance in countries with high antibiotic resistance is not reasonable. 2. Objectives considering the current situation of antibiotic re- sistance and demographic characteristics of visitors of a medical center located in the Northwest of Tehran, this research was conducted to investigate antibiotic self- treatment in the community. 3. Methods This study was conducted to investigate antibiotic self- treatment in the community, initially considering the cur- Copyright © 2020, Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.