How do we best detect toxic effects of drugs taken during pregnancy? A EuroMap paper.
It is a major clinical and public health problem that there is no clear strategy as to how we best make use of information obtained when pregnant women take drugs. For this reason, some pregnant women are not treated as they should be and some are given drugs they should not use. We suggest a monitoring system that combines some of the available datasets in Europe. Using these sources as a starting point, one can develop a system that has sufficient power to detect even rare diseases like congenital malformations and sufficient diversity to detect several possible outcomes from spontaneous abortions to childhood disorders. We also suggest that case-crossover designs should be used in case-control monitoring systems that carry a high risk of recall bias. These considerations are based upon our results from a European Union-funded concerted action called EuroMaP (Medicine and Pregnancy).
Olsen
Jørn
J
The Danish Epidemiology Science Centre at the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Aarhus, Vannelyst Boulevard 6, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. jo@soci.au.dk
Czeizel
Andrew
A
Sørensen
Henrik Toft
HT
Nielsen
Gunnar Lauge
GL
de Jong van den Berg
Lolkje T W
LT
Irgens
Lorentz M
LM
Olesen
Charlotte
C
Pedersen
Lars
L
Larsen
Helle
H
Lie
Rolv T
RT
de Vries
Corinne S
CS
Bergman
Ulf
U
D000014:Abnormalities, Drug-Induced / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015331:Cohort Studies; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D003625:Data Collection; D016208:Databases, Factual; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017891:Pharmacoepidemiology / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications / Q000139:chemically induced / Q000453:epidemiology*