Cent Eur J Public Health 2016, 24(3):248-251

A Unique Opportunity to Study Short- and Long-Term Consequences in Children Prenatally Exposed to Illicit Drugs and Opioid Maintenance Treatment Using Czech and Scandinavian Registers

Roman Gabrhelík¹, Blanka Nechanská¹, Viktor Mravčík^1,2, Svetlana Skurtveit^3,4, Ingunn Olea Lund³, Marte Handal³

¹ Department of Addictology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

² National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction, Prague, Czech Republic

³ Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway

⁴ Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Licit and illicit drug use in pregnant women constitutes a long lasting and serious problem worldwide. Information on long-term effects of maternal drug use on the child is limited. Nationwide registers provide a great potential to study short- and long-term consequences for children exposed to licit and illicit drugs during pregnancy. We discuss this potential, with a special emphasis on exposure to methamphetamine, heroin and prescription drugs used for opioid maintenance treatment (OMT). We also discuss the advantages of analysis using register data and of merging such data from different regions. The Czech and Scandinavian registers are largely comparable and provide great opportunities to conduct innovative research. For instance, using Czech and Scandinavian cohorts we can compare groups with similar characteristics, such as mothers in OMT and mothers addicted to other drugs while also controlling for important confounding factors such as health and socioeconomic status.

Keywords: national health registry, registry-linkage study, drug use, opioid maintenance treatment, methamphetamine, children, pregnancy

Received: June 23, 2015; Revised: May 19, 2016; Accepted: May 19, 2016; Published: September 1, 2016  Show citation