Elementos geradores e consequências da automedicação durante a pandemia: uma revisão integrativa

Abstract

In the year 2019 the disease pandemic caused by the new coronavirus 2019, Covid-19, began, having a huge impact on the world scenario, worsening morbidity and mortality rates. The clinical picture caused by the virus leads to the development of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) which is an acute respiratory infection that is spread mainly by droplets, respiratory secretions, among others, and may also remain viable and infectious in aerosols. Its symptoms, besides those similar to the flu, are those that can even trigger severe pneumonia, so it was necessary to create safety measures such as social isolation to reduce the spread of the virus. During the pandemic, the Internet became the main source of information, unfortunately, many being false, generating many cases of self-medication, a method used by people to treat diseases or self-diagnosed symptoms, discovered or assumed in a non-scientific way, not being guided and without the prescription of qualified professionals. This method occurred because many believed they would be safer against the virus, but there was no scientific proof of the effectiveness of drugs that acted as prophylactic treatment, and even so, pharmacies have become the main sources for the practice of self-medication because they are easily accessible to the population. The present work is based on bibliographic research, selected from scientific articles and theses that deal with the factors that generated self-medication during the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences, aiming to understand the causes, exposing and analyzing data on access to drugs used as prevention and treatment, as well as their undesirable effects and factors that led to the disclosure of ineffective treatments. The main drugs used for the treatment of Covid-19 were vitamin C, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and ivermectin, all of which can have adverse and harmful effects, such as altered cardiac activity through prolongation of the QT interval in the case of hydroxychloroquine, hypotension, and coma in the case of ivermectin, among others. With this, there may have been a large increase in cases of poisoning and high rates of deaths due to the practice of self-medication. Drugs without proven efficacy have been disseminated as a way to combat the coronavirus, many encouraged even by political agents, thus confirming the importance of having a study of the factors that led to this situation, as well as the dissemination of these data.