Centre for Pharmacoepidemiology

We are pleased to announce that Arvid Engström successfully defended his thesis “” Beyond Glycaemic Control: SGLT2 Inhibitors and GLP-1 Receptor Agonists in the Cardiovascular- Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome”  on June 9, 2026.

At the end of May, CPE hosted the SIGMA Consortium Board meeting with its 15 members across Europe. Discussions focused on the fast-changing environment as well as SIGMA’s continued long-term commitment to high-quality scientific research.

Fredh Netterström Wedin has joined CPE as a PhD student in perinatal pharmacoepidemiology under the primary supervision of Cathrine Axfors. Fredh holds a Master’s degree in Public Health and has previously worked at a research consultancy focusing on register based pharmacoepidemiology. In addition to register based drug research, he has a strong interest in meta-research and evidence synthesis, areas in which he has published studies with both methodological and clinical focus. At CPE, Fredh will conduct research on medication use and drug safety during pregnancy, combining methodological studies with applied register based pharmacoepidemiological research.

We are happy to announce that Adam Nygren successfully defended his thesis ”Pharmacoepidemiological studies on depression – treatments, treatment-resistance and consequences”  on 30th of January 2026.

At this year´s NorPEN conference, CPE was well represented with several oral presentations:

Julia Eriksson presented “ Modeling Clinical Indications for GLP-1 receptor agonists in Sweden using machine learning classification”

Silvia Segovia Chacón shared her work on “First trimester melatonin exposure and risk of major congenital malformations: a population-based cohort study”

In addition, Felix Wittström received the award for Best PharmacoEPISLAM presentation for his study “Prevalence and characteristics of woman with bipolar disorder discontinuing lithium treatment in pregnancy: leveraging prescription free-text information in Sweden”.

Stamatìa Tsampà has joined CPE as a doctoral student in perinatal pharmacoepidemiology under the main supervision of Cathrine Axfors. Stamatìa is a medical doctor and holds a master’s degree in Public Health Sciences, KI. During her thesis, she was working on discovering trends and patterns in medication use during pregnancy based on the Swedish registers and is joining CPE to contribute on systematic exploration of pregnancy drug safety using tree-based scan statistics.

Cathrine Axfors recently joined CPE as an Assistant Professor. Cathrine is a medical doctor with a PhD in perinatal psychiatry at Uppsala University, and she just came back to Sweden after two international postdocs in meta-research/evidence synthesis. Her previous research covers perinatal epidemiology, clinical trial transparency, and evidence synthesis for COVID-19. At CPE, Cathrine will start up a new project on systematic exploration of pregnancy drug safety in Swedish registers using tree-based scan statistics. 

At this year’s conference of the European Psychiatric Association in Madrid, Josef Isung presented findings from our ongoing study on sexual dysfunction in depression. The results show that the incidence of sexual dysfunction, including cases treated pharmacologically, is highest in the first year following a depression diagnosis and increases with age.

Essi Whaites Heinonen is new postdoc at CPE who will be working with Carolyn Cesta at 50% combined with clinical work as a neonatologist at Karolinska University Hospital. With her planned studies at CPE, Essi aims to create a neonatology-arm within the group, focusing on the neonatal effects after maternal use of medications during pregnancy.

Awad Smew is new postdoc at CPE who will be working with Carolyn Cesta. His main interest lies in optimising safety of maternal care through pharmacoepidemiologic studies of drug use during pregnancy as well as understanding effects of the pregnant women exposed to surgery, anaesthesia, or intensive care. 

This relates to Awad´s clinical work as a physician in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at Karolinska University Hospital Solna. 

Asina is a public health master's student from Lunds University. This last semester of her master studies, Asina wants to specialize in the field of epidemiology as this is the area of public health she is most passionate about. She will be supervised by Marie Linder and David Hägg during her thesis work, were she will investigate the association between malignant melanoma and atopic dermatitis. Asina completed her undergraduate degree in the field of biological sciences, with a major in genetics.

Ingunn is a master’s student in Mathematical Statistics at Stockholm University. She will be writing her master’s thesis under the supervision of Pär Karlsson and Marie Linder, focusing on causal survival analysis. She completed her BSc in Applied Mathematics, majoring in statistics and data science in Reykjavík, Iceland.

In memory of Helle Kieler, former CPE director who passed away last fall, an In Memoriam has been written and published in the journal “Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety”. 

The memorial article can be found via the following link; https://doi.org/10.1002/pds.70073

Julia Eriksson joined CPE as a statistician in June 2023 and will start her next chapter as a PhD student in January under the supervision of Marie Linder and other CPE/KEP researchers. Her project will investigate the exposure of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues in Sweden, focusing on use, indication, safety and efficacy. Julia has a Master's degree in Mathematical Statistics from Stockholm University and has worked as a statistician at Karolinska Institutet since 2021. 

CPE’s assistant professor Carolyn Cesta and affiliated researcher Cathrine Axfors have received a total of 17 million Swedish kronor in funding from individual starting grants from the Swedish Research Council (VR) and a project grant from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE). The funding will be used for projects investigating the safety of medication use in pregnancy using Swedish national register data in collaboration with Nordic and international collaborators. 

We are happy to inform that CPE will arrange a course in pharmacoepidemiology 17-21 February 2025, “Drug exposure Definitions and Study Design Approaches in Register-based data”.

The application period for the course is from 15 October to 5 November. https://doctoralcourses.application.ki.se/fubasextern/info?kurs=K2F6033

Helle Kieler, professor emeritus and former centre director Helle Kieler , passed away 1 September at the age of 68.

From 2006 to 2023, Helle led the work at CPE and under her leadership CPE developed into one of Europe´s largest pharmacoepidemiologic centre.

Helle has made a lasting mark on the field of pharmacoepidemiology with her research into the safety, effectiveness and utilization of medication, Nordic/international collaboration and the establishment of collaborations between academia, health care, industry and authorities.

At the European Perinatal and Paediatric Epidemiology Conference (EPPEC), Copenhagen, 16-17 September, Silvia Segovia Chacón was awarded the prize for the best poster.

Her poster was titled: Melatonin use in pregnancy: a Scandinavian drug utilization study.

We are happy to announce that Aya Nakitanda successfully defended her thesis “ Antibiotics in pregnancy: utilization, determinants and safety”  on 13th of June 2024.

Aya Nakitanda, Antibiotics in pregnancy:utilization, determinants and safety (2024-06-13)

CPE will be attending, moderating and presenting at ICPE 2024, Berlin.  For poster presentations by CPE employees Diego H. Giunta, David Hägg, Marie Linder and Felix Wittström , see ICPE web page https://2024ispe.eventscribe.net/posterspeakers.asp?pfp=BrowsebySpeaker

Silvia Segovia Chacón joined CPE in 2019 as a research assistant and then project manager. This September she starts her next chapter with CPE as a PhD student under the supervision of Carolyn Cesta and other CPE/KEP researchers. Her project will focus on medication utilization and safety in reproductive aged women and during pregnancy, which complements her background as a midwife and interest in women’s health.

Julia is a statistician with a master’s degree in mathematical statistics from Stockholm University. In the last two years, she has worked at the Division of Biostatistics at the Institutet of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Instiutute. She has experience of using different types of regression models, meta analysis and some machine learning models. Julia has been involved in several types of research groups on sleep, domestic violence, primary care studies, stroke, cancer etc. She will join the team of statisticians at CPE to contribute to pharmacoepidemiologic research to improve public health.

Felix has joined CPE as a doctoral student in reproductive and psychiatric pharmacoepidemiology, under the main supervision of Carolyn Cesta.  His projects will investigate psychotropic drug use during pregnancy and how discontinuation of, or interactions between, medications used in bipolar disorder can affect mother and child. Felix’s background is in medicine and he has started residency training as a doctor in clinical pharmacology.

CPE has together with University of Milano-Bicocca won a EMA call and is on EMA´s short list of eligible research partners for pharmacoepidemiology studies; statistical research.

We are happy to announce that Laura Pazzagli at CPE has received a Forte junior researcher grant of 5 985 000 SEK for the project “Understanding the role of socioeconomic factors on antidiabetic medication use patterns and long-term consequences of type 2 diabetes via novel causal inference methods.”

Welcome Diego Hernan Giunta to CPE!

Diego is a medical doctor, specialized in internal medicine, and he has for the last 15 years been working as an epidemiologist at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires/ the Instituto Universitario del Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires.

Diego says "I decided to join CPE to be an active component of a leading pharmacoepidemiologic research team with strong public health and teaching trajectory. I would like to keep on learning and enhancing our team, by been actively engaged in pharmacoepidemiologic research to improve patients effectiveness and safety”

Carolyn Cesta has been awarded the prestigious EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship to investigate the efficacy and safety of prescribed drugs used for treatment of diabetes during pregnancy.