The Nordic medical birth registers – a potential goldmine for clinical research

Abstract

The Nordic medical birth registers have long been used for valuable clinical research. Their collection of data for more than four decades offers unusual possibilities for research across generations. At the same time, serum and blotting paper blood samples have been stored from most neonates. Two large cohorts (approximately 100 000 births) in Denmark and Norway have been described by questionnaires, interviews and collection of biological samples (blood, urine and milk teeth), as well as a systematic prospective follow-up of the offspring. National patient registers provide information on preceding, underlying and present health problems of the parents and their offspring. Researchers may, with permission from the national authorities, obtain access to individualized or anonymized data from the registers and tissue-banks. These data allow for multivariate analyses but their usefulness depends on knowledge of the specific registers and biological sample banks and on proper validation of the registers.

Perinatal outcomes following an earlier post‐term labour induction policy: a historical cohort study

“…13 Approval was obtained from the Danish Data Protection Agency (J.no: 2013-41-2063) and the National Board of Health (J.no. FSEID 00000579).…”

“…13 We included a broad and unselected sample of individuals, to achieve a high external validity. The size of our study ensured rather precise estimates.…”

Can oxytocin augmentation modify the risk of epidural analgesia by maternal age in cesarean sections?

“…In the Nordic countries, the increasing cesarean section rate plateaued in the last years, at around 16-20% ( Figure 10) 192,193 . The focus on labor management in a relatively healthy population with good access to health care in these countries may have contributed to this stabilization.…”

“…The MBRN and the DNPR have long traditions of providing variables for analyses and publications 193,286,287 . Data used for analyses were extracted from these two registries only due to the low quality of the oxytocin augmentation variable in the other Nordic registries.…”

Charting a research agenda for understanding the epidemiology of food allergy in adults in Europe

“…The extensive healthcare data sets available in, for example, the UK and the national registers available in Nordic countries provide valuable preliminary data sources for such investigations. These routinely collected secondary data have for several decades served as important resources for studying the epidemiology of several chronic diseases (10)(11)(12) and thus can play an important role in filling some of the food allergy-related data gaps in some parts of Europe. Although the issue of validity remains a major concern for routine collected secondary data, especially given that the databases might have been developed for purposes other than studying food allergy (13), this can, to varying degrees, be overcome through well-planned data linkages and triangulation.…”