Centre for Pharmacoepidemiology

CPE, Karolinska Institutet has recently joined The SIGMA consortium as full members. The SIGMA consortium is a alliance of ENCePP research centres with the aims to integrate expertise and data from multiple European Research Centres. The vision is to provide best evidence on the use, benefits and harms of medications, vaccines and devices for the betterment of public health and patient care.

A recent study by the International Pregnancy Safety Study (InPreSS) consortium, was cited in The New York Times in a piece on the use of weight-loss drugs before pregnancy. Ozempic and other GLP-1 receptor agonists, recently gained regulatory approval for treatment of obesity, in addition to their original indication, Type 2 diabetes. 

Congratulations to Carolyn Cesta and her collaborators on the new publication in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study showed that newer diabetes medicines do not appear to increase the risk of birth defects. The largest comparative study to date found no increased risk compared to treatment with insulin, which is considered safe during pregnancy. 

Carolyn Cesta, assistant professor at CPE, has been elected as the co-chair of the Nordic Pharmacoepidemioloigcal Network (NorPEN) https://www.norpen.org/. NorPEN was created in 2008 and is a network academic research groups, public authorities, and national register holders with the purpose of facilitating research within the field of pharmacoepidemiology in the Nordic countries. NorPEN hosts an annual conference and in recent years has focused on providing educational opportunities (e.g., courses, seminars) for trainees in the Nordic countries.

A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry by the International Pregnancy Safety Study (InPreSS) Consortium, including researchers at CPE and colleagues in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and the US, showed that in a cohort of more than 26,000 antipsychotic-exposed pregnancies, prenatal exposure to antipsychotics was generally not associated with an increase in risk of major congenital malformations. This study was a multi-year undertaking initiated by CPE director Helle Kieler, focusing on how best to apply a uniform study design and analytic approach across many countries to be able to study uncommon exposures (e.g., individual drugs) and rare outcomes (e.g., specific malformations subtypes) in detail.

The pattern was similar for sleeping medication. The researchers are now moving on to try to find factors behind the differences. More about this has been reported by the Swedish Radio and the Aftonbladet Daily news podcast. 

Laura Pazzagli at CPE is one of the 5 Principal Investigators who has received funding from the Strategic Research Programme (SRP) in Diabetes Postdoc Fellowship Programme. With this postdoctoral program SRP Diabetes aims to support the next generation of exceptional young scientists within the diabetes area. The funded project aims to investigate the impact of socioeconomic factors on antidiabetic medications use and discontinuation and type 2 diabetes consequences such as cardiovascular problems, kidney failure and retinopathy. Read more about the project: https://ki.se/en/srp-diabetes/srp-diabetes-postdoc-fellowships-project-4

Interested candidates for the postdoctoral position ,can find the advertisement https://ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:487660/type:job/where:4/apply:1

Laura Pazzagli´s paper “Methods for time-varying exposure related problems in pharmacoepidemiology: An overview” is listed among Pottegård et al.´s list over 30 must-read papers for newcomers to pharmacoepidemiology.

The 13th Annual Nordic Pharmacoepidemiological Network (NorPEN) meeting was held as an online meeting in November.

Thank you all who participated!

Read the interview with Johan Reutfors, psychiatrist and researcher at CPE/Karolinska Institutet, were he gives an overview over the research performed related to ADHD and pregnancy.

CPE and Copenhagen University organized the course “Register-based research course: Pharmacoepidemiology - drug use and safety” held at the University of Copenhagen in 2020.

CPE participates as one of 18 organizations in the CONSIGN (Covid-19 infectiON and medicineS In pregnancy) project which is initiated by EMA as an infrastructure to support the monitoring of efficacy and safety of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines when used in day-to-day clinical practice.

November 11th 2020, a short webinar was held for the NorPEN community.

“This study is based on twice as many pregnancies as earlier studies, and we find no increase in the risk of malformation in infants exposed to modafinil during pregnancy,” says the study’s lead author Carolyn Cesta, researcher at CPE/KI.

From left to right:

Chaitra Srinivas, Lamya Abdi, Liwei Zhao

CPE is part of the pan-European public private partnership ConcePTION. The overarching aim is to improve safety of drugs during pregnancy and lactation.

Read the recently published paper in Addiction by Philip Brenner et al. 

CPE researcher Laura Pazzagli was in August rewarded as Best reviewer 2018 for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. 

American College of Epidemiology (ACE) has September 25, 2018, awarded postdoctoral researcher Laura Pazzagli for the Best Paper Published by a Junior Investigator in the Annals of Epidemiology. 

CPE researcher Laura Pazzagli’s article Methods for time-varying exposure related problems in pharmacoepidemiology: An overview, Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, was top 20 most downloaded article the last year.

Young adults between 18-29 years with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) have more than double the risk of all-cause mortality compared with patients with other types of depression. This shows results published in the Journal of Affective Disorders which has also been reported in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.