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Introduction: Danish registers are widely used for statistical and research purposes. The present study examines the use of the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register in the exploration of widespread diseases. Materials and methods: All files for administrative, medical statistics and research use in the period 1998-2002 were examined to identify appropriate files for use in research into widespread diseases. Results: In total, 203 files were examined during the period under study. Of these, 10 (4.9%) had been used for research into widespread diseases. In the majority of the projects, the personal identification numbers of persons who were probands in population-based studies were checked in the Psychiatric Central Research Register prospectively and/or retrospectively. Discussion: Registers can be used as a supplement to clinical studies exploring widespread diseases. In these cases, as in almost all other register-based research, one must be aware of the heterogeneity of the register data, in that the data were collected to fulfil other (administrative) purposes rather than the needs of a given research project and that they include data only on persons who exceeded the nosocomial threshold of the secondary health service. This implies that the available data, apart from those on the most serious diseases (in which cases all patients will normally be in contact with the secondary health service) essentially depend on the financing, dimensioning, political ideology and organisation of the health service, perhaps even more than on the nature of the disease. These reservations especially concern the widespread diseases. The Danish Psychiatric Central Research register can only with large reservations be used as a supplement to other research into the widespread diseases, which is also the case for research within almost all other groups of diseases.

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