Prevalence and Reasons of Self-Medication in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: given the importance of having valid information about the prevalence and reasons of self-medication among pregnant women for preventing self-medication during this period, this study aimed to systematically review and perform a meta-analysis on the prevalence and reasons of selfmedication during pregnancy. methods: this systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted in 2018 to estimate the overall self-medication prevalence based on the database sources pubmed, scopus, google scholar, magiran, iranmedex and sid. required data were collected using keywords: medication, self-medication, overthe- counter, non-prescription, prevalence, etiology, and occurrence and pregnant. descriptive and crosssectional studies in english and persian languages were included. there was no time limitation for search. r software was applied for meta-analysis. random-effects model was applied to estimate the self - medication prevalence with 95% confidence interval. q statistics and i^2 were used to measure the heterogeneity. results: out of 490 retrieved articles, finally 13 studies were included in meta-analysis, 6 studies of which reported the cause of self-medication. the overall estimated prevalence of self-medication based on the random effect model was 32% (95% ci, 22% -44% ). the most important reasons of selfmedication were previous experience of the disease. the most important group of disease in which patients self-medicated was anemia. also, the most important group of medication was herbal. conclusion: the results of this study showed that the prevalence of self-medication among pregnant women was relatively high and required effective interventions to reduce and prevent self-medication among this group. providing required information and raising awareness about complications resulting from selfmedication, in particular herbal medicines and dietary supplements, should be taken into account.