Abstract
Objective
To examine the association between socio-economic factors and use of prescription medication during pregnancy in a population of Danish women.
Methods
This was a population-based cohort study. Using record linkage from public administrative registries, we described the use of prescription medication during pregnancy and the financial and educational resources for each pregnant woman in the cohort.
Results
The analyses included all 19,874 primiparous women delivering singletons in North Jutland county, Denmark, in 1991–1998. We identified 24,243 prescriptions filled by the women during their pregnancies. The highest overall prescription medication use was among women with basic schooling (OR 1.3; 95% CI 1.2–1.4), and lowest among women with the highest education (OR: 0.8; 95% CI 0.7–0.9) compared with women who had vocational education. Stratified analysis of therapeutic subgroups revealed that socio-economic factors were associated with the use of anti-infective and anti-asthmatic medications during pregnancy.
Conclusion
Maternal educational level, and to a lesser degree household income, paternal educational level and cohabitation status, was associated with the use of prescription medication during pregnancy. However, the analyses did not take into account important clinical variables such as maternal illness, and the results could be affected by differential misclassification of exposure information, by confounding or chance.
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the staff at the Department of Health Insurance and Preventive Medicine and Hospital Discharge Registries in the County of Northern Jutland (Sygesikringen, Amtsgaarden) for excellent assistance in preparing the data for analyses.
This investigation has been supported by grants from the EU BIOMED programme (Contract no. BMH4-CT97-2430). The North Jutland Prescription Database has been funded by the North Jutland Research Council, Aalborg Stifts Julelotteri, Speciallaege Heinrich Kopps Legat and the Danish Medical Research Council (grant no. 9700677). The activities of The Danish Epidemiology and Science Centre are financed by a grant from The Danish National Research Foundation.
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Olesen, C., Thrane, N., Henriksen, T.B. et al. Associations between socio-economic factors and the use of prescription medication during pregnancy. Eur J Clin Pharmacol 62, 547–553 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-006-0119-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-006-0119-x