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Recent ADHD News as of Mar 12, 2010
Commonly Used ADHD Medicines Questioned by Study
Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:51:41 - Pacific Time
A recent Australian study has managed to reveal a "significant lack of effect" of some of the most commonly used medicines to treat ADHD, and this has become a finding which has surprised many experts, including one of the researchers involved. Co-author of the WA-based research, which analyzed the effectiveness of drugs now used almost everywhere to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in kids, Professor Lou Landau has been much shocked by the revelations of the study. The Chief Medical Adviser to the West Australian Department of Health stressed that he was not expecting such a strongly negative result. "Yes, we weren't anticipating that significant effect... or the significant lack of effect of the medication", he said. For the sake of study, researchers’ analyzed data collected from the country's long-term Raine Study to assess the health, and other, outcomes of 131 children with ADHD, in over 2,800 Australian families. It revealed how those on traditional ADHD drugs, like as Ritalin and dexamphetamine, displayed poorer educational outcomes, thanchildren with ADHD not on the medicines. The WA Government released the report on Wednesday. Read More...
ADHD Brain May Be a Little Different
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:24:38 - Pacific Time
A link appears to exist between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anomalies in the brain's reward system, a new study suggests. Spanish researchers used MRI to scan the brains of 42 children with ADHD and 42 other children with no signs of ADHD and found that the ventral striatum was smaller, particularly on the right side, in those with ADHD. The ventral striatum includes the nucleus accumbens, which maintains levels of motivation when a person starts a task and continues to maintain motivation until the task is completed. The reduced size of the ventral striatum in children with ADHD was associated with symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsiveness, the researchers said. The study was published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry. These findings support results from previous studies in animals in which researchers identified an association between the nucleus accumbens, impulsive behavior and hyperactivity. The researchers said it appears that ADHD is not only caused by brain alterations that affect cognitive processes, but also by brain irregularities that cause problems with motivation. Read More...
What are the long-term effects of ADHD meds?
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:58:53 - Pacific Time
The short answer is that most studies find treatment with medications like Adderall to have good long-term effects on children with ADHD. That is, children with ADHD who receive treatment with Adderall or one of the other psychostimulants do better in multiple areas of their lives than do children with ADHD who don't receive treatment. For example, treatment in childhood is associated with better grades and less substance abuse during the teenage years. So that is the overall good news. Here's the bad news: As a group, children with ADHD don't do as well in school and have more behavioral and emotional problems through the years than do children without ADHD regardless of how much treatment they get. Notice, please, that I added the qualifier "as a group" to my statement. This is very important, because individual children have very different responses to all manner of treatment, and it turns out this is very important for predicting how they will do over the long haul. We can see this in the long-term findings from a large study of ADHD funded by the federal government. This study has now followed hundreds of subjects from childhood into adolescence over an eight-year period. A key finding at eight years is that how children responded when they first got either medication or therapy strongly predicted how well they were doing as teenagers. If a child responded very well to initial treatment, he or she was much more likely to be doing well in their lives as teenagers than children who didn't respond well. Taken together, this is what I think the science says: ADHD is a serious disorder that has long-term negative consequences on a person's life. In general, treatment provides long-term benefit, but it's not perfect, and most children with ADHD continue to struggle into their teen years, compared with their peers without ADHD. If you can find an intervention -- either medication-based or therapy-based -- that produces significant improvements, this is a strong sign that your child will probably do well over the long term, especially if he or she continues with the treatment. This means that it is very worthwhile to keep searching for a treatment that produces clear improvements in your child, even if this requires trials of several medicines, therapists or both. Read More...
New study links phthalates to ADHD
Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:17:14 - Pacific Time
Phthalates, or phthalate esters, are esters of phthalic acid and are mainly used as plasticizers (substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity). They are primarily used to soften polyvinyl chloride. Phthalates are being phased out of many products in the United States and European Union over health concerns. According to a new study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, there is a link between exposure to phthalate chemicals and the development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in school-aged children. The Korean study examined students who were identified as having ADHD symptoms, measuring the phthalate chemicals found in their urine, and compared this information with students without symptoms of the disorder. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that children who were identified as having ADHD symptoms were more likely to have higher levels of phthalate chemical markers in their urine than those who do not have ADHD symptoms. This is the first human study to find a link between ADHD and exposure to phthalates, a common ingredient in many plastics best known for their roles in keeping plastics soft and liquids mixed. One interesting point is that phthalates leave the body rather quickly, so the study's results reflect recent exposure rather than past exposures. Yet, the roots of ADHD likely extend back to early development in the womb. It's unclear exactly when and how phthalate exposure could lead to the development of ADHD. More studies that focus on the relationship between prenatal phthalate exposure and the development of ADHD in children might help researchers get a better understanding of the disorder and it's relationship to phthalates. Read More...
Disconnect Between Brain Regions in ADHD
Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:30:12 - Pacific Time
Two brain areas fail to connect when children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder attempt a task that measures attention, according to researchers at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and M.I.N.D. Institute. "This is the first time that we have direct evidence that this connectivity is missing in ADHD," said Ali Mazaheri, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain. Mazaheri and his colleagues made the discovery by analyzing the brain activity in children with ADHD. The paper appears in the current online issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. The researchers measured electrical rhythms from the brains of volunteers, especially the alpha rhythm. When part of the brain is emitting alpha rhythms, it shows that it is disengaged from the rest of the brain and not receiving or processing information optimally, Mazaheri said. In the experiments, children with diagnosed ADHD and normal children were given a simple attention test while their brain waves were measured. The test consisted of being shown a red or blue image, or hearing a high or low sound, and having to react by pressing a button. Immediately before the test, the children were shown either a letter "V" to alert them that the test would involve a picture (visual), or an inverted "V" representing the letter "A" to alert them that they would hear a sound (auditory).The experiments were conducted by researchers in the laboratories of Ron Mangun, professor of psychology and neurology, and Blythe Corbett, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a researcher at the M.I.N.D. Institute. According to current models of how the brain allocates attention, signals from the frontal cortex -- such as the "V" and "A" cues -- should alert other parts of the brain, such as the visual processing area at the back of the head, to prepare to pay attention to something. That should be reflected in a drop in alpha wave activity in the visual area, Mazaheri said. And that is what the researchers found in the brain waves of children without ADHD. But children with the disorder showed no such drop in activity, indicating a disconnection between the center of the brain that allocates attention and the visual processing regions, Mazaheri said. "The brains of the children with ADHD apparently prepare to attend to upcoming stimuli differently than do typically developing children," he said. Read More...
Seizure drug limits aggression in kids with ADHD
Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:51:34 - Pacific Time
If your child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is having trouble controlling his aggressive behaviors, adding a drug commonly used to treat seizures and manic depression may help, according to a small new study. Doctors typically use stimulants such as Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderal (a combination of amphetamines) to treat the main symptoms of ADHD. But some children are still aggressive even when those symptoms disappear, according to study co-author Dr. Joseph C. Blader, from Stony Brook University School of Medicine, New York, and colleagues. In their study, Blader's team decided to try the anti-seizure drug divalproex, which has been shown to reduce aggression in children and adolescents with a variety of psychiatric disorders. In the American Journal of Psychiatry for December, they report on 30 ADHD patients, 6 to 13 years of age, with aggression that did not respond to stimulants. Half of the children received divalproex in addition to their regular ADHD treatment, while half received a placebo, or inactive, pill, plus their usual medications. All of the children's families had weekly behavioral therapy. Three of the children either left the study before it was completed, or could not be found for follow-up testing. Eight of 14 patients in the divalproex group exhibited less aggressive behavior, compared to just 2 of 13 in the placebo group. Although the drug was generally well-tolerated, some children taking it experienced feelings of sadness and trouble falling asleep.The study could point the way toward better combinations of medications for ADHD, Dr. Hans Steiner and Dr. Niranjan S. Karnik, from Stanford University, California, write in a related editorial. Read More...
St John's Wort Ineffective for ADHD
Thu, 3 Dec 2009 06:07:10 - Pacific Time
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, stimulant medication can effectively treat 60% to 70% of youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet many parents seek alternative therapies, and Hypericum perforatum (St John's wort) is 1 of the top 3 botanicals used. In order to determine the efficacy and safety of H perforatum for the treatment of ADHD in children, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted between March 2005 and August 2006 at Bastyr University, Kenmore, Washington, among a volunteer sample of 54 children aged 6 to 17 years who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) criteria for ADHD by structured interview. Other medications for ADHD were not allowed during the trial. The outcome was measured by the performance on the ADHD Rating Scale–IV (range, 0-54) and Clinical Global Impression Improvement Scale (range, 0-7), and adverse events. The conclusion was that use of H perforatum for treatment of ADHD over the course of 8 weeks did not improve symptoms. Read More...
Drugs not best option for ADHD: report
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:18:40 - Pacific Time
Australian children with hyperactivity disorders shouldn't be medicated unless their symptoms are "pervasive" and affect all aspects of life, doctors and parents have been told. And drugs should never be a first-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in pre-school aged children. More than 350,000 Australian children and adolescents are estimated to suffer from ADHD. Draft treatment guidelines were released on Monday by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and the National Health and Medical Research Council. They recommend a "multimodal" approach to treatment. "For a child with ADHD this may well involve some parental education, some behaviour modification therapy, some educational support and it could include medication," the chair of RACP's guidelines working group, David Forbes, told AAP. He says the new guidelines will result in fewer children on drugs. The previous guidelines stated "medication should be considered for all children with ADHD". "But we quite clearly say medication will not be required for all children with ADHD and all children do need a multimodal approach," Prof Forbes said. Read More...
Common Plastic Chemical Linked To ADHD
Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:03:17 - Pacific Time
A recent study showed a strong positive association between phthalate metabolites in urine and symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among school-age children (Biol Psychiatry. 2009 Nov 15;66(10):958-63). Researchers preformed a cross-sectional examination of urine phthalate concentrations in 261 Korean children, aged 8 to 11 years. They also scored ADHD symptoms and neuropsychological dysfunction with regard to attention and impulsivity in the children. They found the mean concentrations of the phthalates Mono-2-ethylheyl phthalate (MEHP) and mono-2-ethyl-5-oxohexylphthalate (MEOP) and mono-n-butyl phthalate (MNBP) were 34.0 μg/dL (SD = 36.3; range: 2.1–386.7), 23.4 μg/dL (SD = 23.0; range: .75–244.8) and 46.7 μg/L (SD = 21.4; range: 13.2–159.3), respectively. After adjustment for covariates, teacher-rated ADHD scores were significantly associated with metabolites of Di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP) metabolites, but not with metabolites of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) metabolites. They also found significant relationships between the urine concentrations of metabolites for DBP and the number of omission and commission errors in continuous performance tests after adjustment for covariates. Phthalates are mainly used to increase the flexibility, transparency, durability and longevity of plastics. Read More...
News Archive
Passive smoke causes ADHD in kids: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:21:43 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Exposure to smoke, lead ups risk of ADHD: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:19:34 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Australian study on genetics of ADHD: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:06:03 - Pacific Time: Read More...
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