Historical cohort study of in utero exposure to uterotonic drugs and cognitive function in young adult life

Cohort Profile: The Danish Conscription Database(DCD): A cohort of 728,160 men born from 1939 through 1959

The Danish Conscription Database (DCD) was established to enable studies of the influence of early physical and mental exposures on adverse health and social outcomes from a life-course perspective. In Denmark, all young men are requested to appear before the conscription board when they turn 18 years, to be assessed for military service. The DCD was established by digitizing information from conscription board register cards on the height, weight, educational level, intelligence test score and examination details of Danish conscripts. The DCD contains information on 728,160 men born from 1939 through 1959 and examined by the conscription board from 1957 through 1984. The unique Danish personal identification number of each individual conscript has been traced, and this allows linkage of the DCD to all Danish health and socioeconomic registers. More than 130,000 deaths have been identified in a recent linkage to the Danish Register of Cause of Death. We encourage collaboration, and interested researchers should contact: danishconscriptiondatabase.glostrup-hospital@regionh.dk.

Effect of home and hospital delivery on long-term cognitive function

We examined the relation between place of birth and cognitive function in young adult life in a historical cohort study based upon birth data from the computerized Danish Medical Birth Registry and cognitive function as measured at time of drafting for military service in two Danish counties. The cohort included 4,296 Danish conscripts born between 1973 and 1976, 123 born at home and 4,173 born in hospital or at a birth clinic. Cognitive function was measured by the Boerge Prien test in men, 18 to 20 years of age. The highest possible score is 78. The mean Boerge Prien test score was 43.1 for conscripts born in specialized hospital departments, 2.4 higher for conscripts born in a birth clinic (95% confidence interval = 0.9-4.0), and 2.1 lower for conscripts born at home (95% confidence limits = -3.8 to -0.4) after adjusting for birth weight, length at birth, birth order, gestational age, maternal age, and marital and occupational status. Our findings raise the possibility that home birth can lead to lower cognitive function in adulthood; however, from our data we could not distinguish between planned and unplanned births at home.