Publications by authors named "Sigridhur Zoega"
Importance: In pregnancy, the benefits of lithium treatment for relapse prevention in psychiatric conditions must be weighed against potential teratogenic effects. Currently, there is a paucity of information on how and when lithium is used by pregnant women.
Objective: To examine lithium use in the perinatal period.
Article Synopsis
- Federated networks enhance data privacy by allowing analysis without transferring sensitive data, supporting trustworthy data analysis in healthcare research.
- The International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA) tested a federated network with partners to analyze data from the International Perinatal Outcome in the Pandemic (iPOP) Study, facing both challenges and benefits in the process.
- Establishing these networks requires significant investment and planning for technology and governance, which can lead to powerful collaborative research opportunities using health data from various countries.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to investigate if high-dose folic acid (>1 mg daily) use in women who have given birth and those with epilepsy is linked to a higher risk of cancer, especially in children born to mothers with epilepsy.
- Researchers analyzed data from medical birth registers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, tracking cancer diagnoses among women over time while taking into account other factors like antiseizure medication use.
- Results showed that women exposed to high-dose folic acid had a 20% increased overall risk of cancer, which slightly decreased when considering a 6-month delay, with a notable increase in non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases among those exposed.
Article Synopsis
- Many pregnant women stop taking important medications called SSRIs and SNRIs, which help with depression and anxiety, and this affects their health after having a baby.
- Researchers studied nearly 28,000 pregnant women in Sweden to see how stopping these medications impacted their mental health and time off work after childbirth.
- They found that about half of the women stopped using these medications, and those who did were often younger, less educated, and more likely to have smoked during pregnancy.
Risk factors and recurrence of hyperemesis gravidarum: A population-based record linkage cohort study.
Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand
December 2024
Introduction: There are limited contemporary population-based studies on the risk factors for hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a severe type of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and trend of HG over time, identify risk factors for any and multiple HG health service visits during pregnancy, and investigate HG recurrence across pregnancies.
Material And Methods: This population-based record linkage cohort study featured births in New South Wales, Australia from 2010 to 2019.
Background: The Medicines Intelligence (MedIntel) Data Platform is an anonymised linked data resource designed to generate real-world evidence on prescribed medicine use, effectiveness, safety, costs and cost-effectiveness in Australia.
Results: The platform comprises Medicare-eligible people who are ≥18 years and residing in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, any time during 2005-2020, with linked administrative data on dispensed prescription medicines (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme), health service use (Medicare Benefits Schedule), emergency department visits (NSW Emergency Department Data Collection), hospitalisations (NSW Admitted Patient Data Collection) plus death (National Death Index) and cancer registrations (NSW Cancer Registry). Data are currently available to 2022, with approval to update the cohort and data collections annually.
Article Synopsis
- Childhood maltreatment (CM) impacts health across one's life, and this study investigates its role in severe COVID-19 outcomes among 151,427 participants in the UK Biobank.
- * The study found that individuals with a history of CM had a significantly higher risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19, with physical neglect being the most impactful type.
- * Results indicated that socio-economic status, lifestyle, and pre-existing health conditions explained over half of the link between CM and severe COVID-19 outcomes, while CM was less strongly tied to COVID-19 diagnosis and vaccine uptake.
Importance: Maternal epilepsy is associated with adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes. A better understanding of this condition and the associated risk of mortality and morbidity at the time of delivery could help reduce adverse outcomes.
Objective: To determine the risk of severe maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality among women with epilepsy.
Article Synopsis
- There are significant safety concerns about using smoking cessation medications during pregnancy, particularly regarding the risk of congenital malformations, leading to recommendations against certain drugs like varenicline and bupropion, and caution with nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).
- The study aimed to assess how many pregnant individuals were prescribed smoking cessation medications in New South Wales, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden from 2015 to 2020, particularly during the first trimester.
- Out of over 1.7 million pregnancies studied, a small percentage (up to 11.39%) of pregnant women who smoked used pharmacotherapies, with the highest usage rates for NRT and varenicline in certain regions.*
Objective: Research points to disparities in disease burden and access to medical care in epilepsy. We studied the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and antiseizure medication (ASM) use in pregnancies with maternal epilepsy.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study consisting of 21 130 pregnancies with maternal epilepsy identified from Nordic registers during 2006-2017.
Background: Prescribed opioid analgesics are frequently used to manage pain in pregnancy. However, the available literature regarding the teratogenic potential of opioid use during pregnancy has not been systematically summarised. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the quality of the evidence on these potential risks and calculate a pooled estimate of risk for any opioid analgesic and individual opioids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The objective was to describe mental health service and psychotropic medicine use among a cohort of Aboriginal young people and quantify their relation to sociodemographic, family and health factors.
Methods: In a prospective cohort study with data linkage, 892 Aboriginal children aged 0-17 years living in urban and regional areas of New South Wales, Australia, were included. We assessed mental health-related service use, paediatric service use and psychotropic medicine dispensing claims covered by the Australian Government Medicare Benefits Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from July 2012 to June 2017.
Background/obectives: Oral retinoids are teratogenic, and pregnancy avoidance is an important part of retinoid prescribing. Australia does not have a standardised pregnancy prevention programme for women using oral retinoids, and the contraception strategies for women who use oral retinoids are not well understood. The objectives were to determine trends in the use of prescription retinoids among Australian reproductive-aged women and whether women dispensed oral retinoids used contraception concomitantly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to treat a range of psychiatric conditions in women of reproductive age and during pregnancy, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder, and insomnia. This study aimed to evaluate whether children exposed to antipsychotic medication prenatally are at increased risk of specific neurodevelopmental disorders and learning difficulties.
Methods: Our population-based cohort study used nationwide register data (1 January 2000-31 December 2020) on pregnant women diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and their live-born singletons from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
Previous studies report an association between maternal diabetes mellitus (MDM) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), often overlooking unmeasured confounders such as shared genetics and environmental factors. We therefore conducted a multinational cohort study with linked mother-child pairs data in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden to evaluate associations between different MDM (any MDM, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and pregestational diabetes mellitus (PGDM)) and ADHD using Cox proportional hazards regression. We included over 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study was undertaken to characterize the use of higher doses of folic acid (≥1 mg daily) in relation to pregnancy in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in women with epilepsy treated with antiseizure medication (ASM).
Methods: In this observational study, we used data from national medical birth, patient, and prescription registers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to retrospectively identify pregnancies in women with epilepsy treated with ASM from 2006 to 2017. The proportion of higher dose folic acid supplementation in pregnancies among women receiving ASM for epilepsy was calculated according to country of origin, time period, and type of ASM.
Background: The short- and long-term consequences of restricted fetal growth cause considerable concern, and how prenatal exposure to different antiseizure medications (ASMs) affects fetal growth remains uncertain.
Methods: This was a population-based cohort study of liveborn singleton children born in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden from 1996 to 2017. Prenatal exposure was defined as maternal filling of prescriptions for ASM during pregnancy registered in national prescription registries and primary outcomes were adjusted odds ratios (aORs) of microcephaly or being born small for gestational age.
Importance: Use of valproate and certain other antiseizure medications (ASMs) in pregnancy is associated with abnormal fetal brain development with potential long-term implications for the child.
Objective: To examine whether use of valproate and other ASMs in pregnancy among mothers with epilepsy is associated with epilepsy risk in their children.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective, population-based register cohort study included singletons born to mothers with epilepsy in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden from January 1, 1996, to December 31, 2017.
Background And Objectives: Valproate should be avoided in pregnancy, but it is the most effective drug for generalized epilepsies. Alternative treatment may require combinations of other drugs. Our objectives were to describe first trimester use of antiseizure medication (ASM) combinations that are relevant alternatives to valproate and determine whether specific combinations were associated with a lower risk of major congenital malformations (MCM) compared with valproate monotherapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study investigates how perceived disruptions in healthcare services during COVID-19 are linked to socio-demographic factors, pre-existing health conditions, and related physical and psychological symptoms among 15,754 Icelandic participants.
- It was found that those with pre-existing psychiatric or chronic health conditions reported higher perceived disruptions, while individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 did not experience an increase in perceived disruption.
- Additionally, perceived disruptions were associated with worsening mental health symptoms, indicating that vulnerable populations faced significant challenges during the pandemic, although the healthcare system in Iceland largely remained accessible to COVID-19 patients.
Importance: Increasing use of second-line noninsulin antidiabetic medication (ADM) in pregnant individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) may result in fetal exposure, but their teratogenic risk is unknown.
Objective: To evaluate periconceptional use of second-line noninsulin ADMs and whether it is associated with increased risk of major congenital malformations (MCMs) in the infant.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This observational population-based cohort study used data from 4 Nordic countries (2009-2020), the US MarketScan Database (2012-2021), and the Israeli Maccabi Health Services database (2009-2020).
Background: Although often intended for long-term treatment, discontinuation of medication for ADHD is common. However, cross-national estimates of discontinuation are missing due to the absence of standardised measures. The aim of this study was to determine the rate of ADHD treatment discontinuation across the lifespan and to describe similarities and differences across countries to guide clinical practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital supportive cancer care is recommended to improve patient outcomes. A portal was designed and embedded within the electronic medical record and public health portal of Iceland, consisting of symptom and needs monitoring, educational material, and messaging.
Objective: This study aims to assess (1) portal feasibility (adoption, engagement, usability, and acceptability), (2) potential predictors of usability and acceptability, and (3) the potential impact of the portal on patient-reported outcomes.