The home secretary has requested an urgent update from police on investigations into a spate of reports of women who believe they may have been “spiked”, the Guardian understands.

Priti Patel’s intervention comes after police in Nottingham arrested a 20-year-old man as part of an investigation following social media reports of women being injected with needles in the past fortnight.

A 19-year-old student said on social media that she had woken up with “zero recollection” of her evening at a Nottingham nightclub and a “sharp, agonising pain” in her leg, and she later discovered what appeared to be a pinprick mark on her leg.

Groups from more than 50 universities around the UK have joined an online campaign calling for boycotts of nightclubs one day next week to highlight the issue of women’s safety.

Sarah Crew, temporary chief constable for Avon and Somerset Police, who leads the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s work on adult sexual offences, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that it was “difficult to make an assessment” on the prevalence of spiking by injection, but added that there was “a problem” of drink spiking.

Prof Fiona Measham, chair of criminology at Liverpool university and director of the Loop, a drug-testing organisation said the discussions around safety in nightclubs could be a “Me Too movement” for the industry.

Measham urged caution until more evidence was gathered about the prevalence of injection spiking. “We know from research that there is a very low incidence of [drink] spiking, and we’d imagine therefore, the risk is even lower of spiking by injection.

“The anxieties [around women’s safety] are very real and we should take all reports seriously, but what I think this is an opportunity for is discussion about the bigger issues of safety in and around nightclubs.”

The club boycott campaign was started in Edinburgh by Martha Williams and has now spread to a nationwide movement. It follows a number of as yet unverified reports of spiking by injection occurring in the city, as well as incidents of alleged drink spiking. Police Scotland said it was investigating cases in three cities.

Williams, 21, hopes the campaign – which organisers say is not a “stay at home” message, but a call to protest – will lead to better education about being spiked and clubs to start “actually taking action and being proactive” to prevent drink spiking.

“People don’t really know the procedure of what happens when you’re spiked and what to do after. It should be part of sex education in high school,” she added.

As well as calls from campaigners for covers for drinks, better training for night-life staff and for police to conduct more rigorous searches of clubbers, Measham also pointed to initiatives such as Manchester-based SAFE, which provides dedicated welfare staff within venues that can help people get home safely.

The criminologist said there may also be heightened anxiety around clubbing and going out post-lockdown. “We’ve had 850,000 young people who turned 18 during lockdown,” said Meacham, describing this year’s freshers are more likely to be “nightlife-naive”.

“Many have had a very intense 18 months with their parents, and have had far more scrutiny, and support, hopefully, but also surveillance. So they’ve gone almost from one extreme to the other in the space of six months.”

Bea McKenzie, a student from Stirling, shared a petition to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry, which has gained more than 130,000 signatures since its launch last week.

McKenzie says that she has heard from many women across the country after sharing her own experience of drink spiking in September on social media. The 18-year-old described being picked up by an ambulance at the local train station at around 4am, unable to remember her address or articulate her own name properly, and with no memory of the previous night.

She called the police, but says that they seemed “very uninterested” and did not offer her any support.

Athena, a 19-year-old music student who lives in County Durham, said she called the police and NHS 111 after she believed her drink had been spiked in a bar last month, and was told to go to A&E to receive a drug test. After waiting for three hours, she was turned away at 1am and told the hospital didn’t do drug tests, and they didn’t know where she could get one.

Police Scotland said it took all reports seriously and appealed for anyone with information to contact them. “We are aware of posts circulating on social media about spiking incidents involving injections in Scotland. Officers are carrying out inquiries, and a small number of reports from the Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow areas are being investigated. These do not appear to be linked.”

The Home Office has requested an update from police forces on their findings from investigations so far. A government source said the recent reports were “absolutely awful” and added: “We have asked for an update from the police on this and would encourage anyone to report this behaviour to the police.”