ArticlePharmacoepidemiology and drug safety2019
Methods to generate and validate a Pregnancy Register in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink primary care database.
Article in Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 136 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index and risk of preterm birth: a collaboration using large routine health datasets.BMC medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Guidance to develop a multidisciplinary, international, pediatric registry: a systematic review.Orphanet journal of rare diseases · 2023Pooled it
- Acceptability and feasibility of a planned preconception weight loss intervention in women with long-acting reversible contraception: the Plan-it mixed-methods study.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2023Trial
- Impact of perinatal anxiety on healthcare utilisation: a matched cohort study using electronic health records in the UK.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes: Analysis From the UK, Norway, and Sweden.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Identifying Pregnancies in Population-Based Data Sources: Development and Application of the ConcePTION Pregnancy Algorithm.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Pregnancy identification method as a source of bias in studies of prenatal exposures using real-world data.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Autoimmune diseases and risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes: a population-based cohort study of five million pregnancies in the UK.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Development and Validation of a Prediction Model for Cardiovascular Risk in Reproductive-Aged Women.JACC. Advances · 2026Article
- Identifying pregnancies in routinely collected health data: a scoping review of methods.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- Lithium prescribing in the perinatal period: UK primary care cohort study.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2026Article
- Ultrasound Procedure Codes Enable Timely Surveillance of Ongoing Pregnancies: A Nationwide Population-Based Register Study.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Academic impact and research data utilisation of the clinical practice research datalink: scientometric analyses.European journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Therapeutic Strategies After Discontinuation of Valproate By Females with Epilepsy of Child-Bearing Potential: An Insurance Claims Database Study in France and the United Kingdom.Clinical drug investigation · 2026Article
- Patterns of antidepressant prescribing around pregnancy: a descriptive analysis using Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2026Article
- Medicines prescribed in pregnancy: Protocol for a signal detection study using routinely collected data in England.PloS one · 2026Article
- Pregnancy complications and risk of cardiometabolic-renal conditions in 1.4 million women in England: longitudinal study.BMJ medicine · 2026Article
- Methods to establish a Pregnancy Register in the QResearch Database.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Pregnancy, asthma and exacerbations: a population-based cohort.The European respiratory journal · 2025Article
- First trimester antidepressant use and miscarriage: a population-based cohort study using Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposePrimary care databases are increasingly used for researching pregnancy, eg, the effects of maternal drug exposures. However, ascertaining pregnancies, their timing, and outcomes in these data is challenging. While individual studies have adopted different methods, no systematic approach to characterise all pregnancies in a primary care database has yet been published. Therefore, we developed a new algorithm to establish a Pregnancy Register in the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) GOLD primary care database.
methodsWe compiled over 4000 read and entity codes to identify pregnancy-related records among women aged 11 to 49 years in CPRD GOLD. Codes were categorised by the stage or outcome of pregnancy to facilitate delineation of pregnancy episodes. We constructed hierarchical rule systems to handle information from multiple sources. We assessed the validity of the Register to identify pregnancy outcomes by comparing our results to linked hospitalisation records and Office for National Statistics population rates.
resultsOur algorithm identified 5.8 million pregnancies among 2.4 million women (January 1987-February 2018). We observed close agreement with hospitalisation data regarding completeness of pregnancy outcomes (91% sensitivity for deliveries and 77% for pregnancy losses) and their timing (median 0 days difference, interquartile range 0-2 days). Miscarriage and prematurity rates were consistent with population figures, although termination and, to a lesser extent, live birth rates were underestimated in the Register.
conclusionsThe Pregnancy Register offers huge research potential because of its large size, high completeness, and availability. Further validation work is underway to enhance this data resource and identify optimal approaches for its use.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.