As diagnoses of ADHD among women rise, more individuals are faced with the complex decision of whether to continue pharmacological treatment during pregnancy. To inform these choices, large-scale, robust evidence from real-world studies is essential. However, as data from a single country may be inconclusive, multinational collaboration is key.
Dr Claudia Bruno, a Research Associate from the Medicines Intelligence Research Program at UNSW Sydney’s School of Population Health, presented a study at the 10th World Congress on ADHD in Prague in May 2025 answering the important question: Does prenatal exposure to ADHD medication increase the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in children? Supported by the Gro Harlem Brundtland Visiting Scholar program, Dr Bruno travelled to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health to lead this study in collaboration with PI Jacqueline Cohen who received funding from the ADHD Research Network in Norway for the project.
Using data from national health registers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway—covering 3.4 million births between 2000 and 2020—the researchers found no consistent evidence of increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders following stimulant use in pregnancy. These findings offer reassurance to clinicians and expectant parents and support the growing consensus that ADHD medication use during pregnancy does not significantly harm child neurodevelopment.
The research built on the NorPreSS Common Data Model (CDM), a framework which harmonises raw national health data from the five Nordic countries in a unified structure. The CDM enhances efficiency, transparency, and reproducibility by enabling researchers to use the same data analysis code in different countries, a significant advance over previous approaches.
Now, Dr. Bruno and colleagues are setting up the CDM with data from New South Wales, Australia, covering over 1.9 million births. The investment in NorPreSS positions Australia for further large-scale, multinational collaborations evaluating the safety of medications in pregnancy. Dr Bruno has received support from the Centre of Research Excellence in Medicines Intelligence (MI-CRE), a national collaboration delivering ‘real-world’ evidence on the use and outcomes of medicines in Australia. She is also a Research Fellow at the Leeder Centre for Health Policy, Economics and Data, University of Sydney.
Back to blog