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Recent ADHD News as of Feb 06, 2012
ADHD on the Rise: Almost One in 10 Children Diagnosed
Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:07:21 - Pacific Time
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is on the rise, with nearly one in 10 American children receiving an ADHD diagnosis, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "ADHD continues to increase, and that has implications for educational and health care because kids with ADHD disproportionately use more services, and there are several co-morbid conditions that go along with it," Dr. Lara J. Akinbami, lead author of the study, told ABCNews.com. From 1998 to 2009, according to the study, the percentage of children ever diagnosed with ADHD increased from 7 percent to 9 percent. The study also found a larger increase in ADHD among children in the South and Midwest regions of the U.S. ADHD is one of the most common behavioral problems in children, characterized by difficulty in sustaining attention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. It continues to occur more frequently in boys than girls, and the number of cases increased by about 10 percent in children living in low-income households. "ADHD is genetically based and often unnoticed," said Michael Manos, head of the Center for Pediatric Behavioral Health at the Cleveland Clinic. "We're far better at noticing it now, and that is good." But researchers say it's not clear whether the number of reported cases of ADHD has actually increased or whether there's simply more awareness of the disorder. "Most informed professionals will concur that it is better reported and recognized. This fact has resulted in the prevalence increases," said Manos. Every major ethnic group saw an increase in ADHD except for children of Mexican descent. "Mexican children remain with much lower ADHD prevalence than other Hispanics," said Akinbami. "We tend to miss the differences between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, and this difference could be largely due to remaining language behaviors and cultural attitudes. Whether this is a real lower prevalence or if it remains unreported is unclear." Past research shows that only about half of children who qualify for an ADHD test actually receive one, researchers noted in the study. "With prevalence rates so high across sex and race, and with the barriers that limit treatment in low-income families, we do a disservice to a large percentage of our population," said Manos. Read More...
ADHD Tied to Risk of Written-Language Disorder in Children
Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:11:49 - Pacific Time
Children of both genders with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have an increased risk of written-language disorder (WLD), with girls having a significantly higher risk of WLD with reading disability (RD) than boys, according to a study published online Aug. 22 in Pediatrics.Kouichi Yoshimasu, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues investigated the incidence of WLD among 5,718 children (2,956 boys and 2,762 girls) with and without ADHD (born between 1976 to 1982, and 5 years or older). Data were collected from medical, school, and private tutorial records; cumulative incidences of WLD, with or without RD, and hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated. The investigators found that, for both genders, children with ADHD had a significantly higher cumulative incidence of WLD by 19 years of age than children without ADHD (boys, 64.5 versus 16.5 percent; girls, 57 versus 9.4 percent). Compared to boys, girls had a significantly higher magnitude of association between ADHD and WLD with RD (adjusted HR for girls, 9.8; adjusted HR for boys, 4.2); however, there was no significant difference between boys and girls for the association between ADHD and WLD without RD (adjusted HR for girls, 7.4; adjusted HR for boys, 6.6). "Our results show that ADHD is associated with a significantly increased risk of WLD in boys and girls regardless of comorbid RD; however, the magnitude of the risk of WLD with RD associated with ADHD is significantly higher for girls than for boys," the authors write. Read More...
Early ADHD diagnosis a risk factor for depression
Tue, 5 Oct 2010 19:03:46 - Pacific Time
Children who are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at an early age are at greater risk of depression and suicide than other teens and parents need to take the condition seriously, U.S. researchers said on Monday. They said 18 percent of children in a study who were diagnosed with ADHD between ages 4 to 6 were depressed as adolescents - about 10 times higher than adolescents without ADHD. And about 5 percent of children with an early ADHD diagnosis thought about committing suicide at least once, and were twice as likely as other children to have tried it. "This is another pretty powerful demonstration that parents should not disregard ADHD in early childhood," said Benjamin Lahey of the University of Chicago, who worked on the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. ADHD is one of the most common child mental disorders and is estimated to affect around 3 percent to 5 percent of children globally. Children with ADHD are excessively restless, impulsive and easily distracted, and often have difficulties at home and in school. There is no cure, but the symptoms can be kept in check by a combination of medication and behavioral therapy. For the study, researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, followed 123 children diagnosed with ADHD at age 4 to 6 for up to 14 years, until they reached 18 to 20. They compared these children with 119 children from similar neighborhoods and schools. The children were checked every year for the first four years, then during years 6 through 9 and 12 through 14. "This is a study that ... shows that children diagnosed at 4 to 6 years of age are at increased risk for depression and to some extent suicide during late childhood and adolescence," Lahey said in a telephone interview. Read More...
ADHD meds help, but many parents still against them
Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:58:06 - Pacific Time
Medication may be the most effective treatment for kids with ADHD but it’s not a cure-all, a new Consumer Reports survey shows. Parents surveyed by the magazine reported using a variety of strategies to improve their kids’ symptoms, such as hiring tutors, switching schools, modifying diets, and changing the way they spoke to their children. The results are good news, says Dr. Orly Avitzur, a neurologist and medical adviser to the magazine. Kids improve the most when medication is coupled with complementary approaches, such as behavioral therapy and strategies to help with academics. Consumer Reports interviewed 934 parents of children with ADHD, asking about a variety of topics, ranging from the impact of medications to the effect of complementary strategies, to which physicians provided the most help. Most families - 84 percent - tried medication at some point, with 67 percent reporting that the drugs helped "a lot”" In general, kids who got a prescription for ADHD were older: The average age of children who had tried medication was 13. Another strategy that got good marks was switching a child to a school that was better suited to handle ADHD. A full 45 percent of the parents who tried this approach said the switch helped "a lot." A similar strategy, hiring a tutor, got thumbs up from 37 percent of the parents who tried it. Parents also reported changing the way they interacted with their children. Some started giving their kids only one instruction at a time - that helped "a lot" for 39 percent of the parents who tried it. Read More...
Vyvanse effective for teens with ADHD
Fri, 28 May 2010 04:20:17 - Pacific Time
The stimulant drug Vyvanse improves attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescents beginning as early as the first week of treatment, according to a new study. "We saw a 50 percent improvement in symptoms" compared with placebo, Dr. Ann Childress told Reuters Health. Childress presented her group's findings this week at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in New Orleans. "Vyvanse improved symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity compared to placebo," she noted. Vyvanse is currently approved in the US for treatment of ADHD in children aged 6 to 12 years and in adults. The 45-center randomized trial involved 309 subjects 13 to 17 years of age with at least moderate symptoms of ADHD. The research team assigned 77 teenagers to the placebo group and the remaining 232 to Vyvanse at 30, 50, or 70 milligrams per day for 4 weeks. Significant between-group differences, favoring Vyvanse, became evident within the first week and persisted throughout the study. Nearly twice as many subjects in the Vyvanse groups were rated as very much or much improved at the end of the study. There were no surprises regarding side effects, said Childress, who is from the Center for Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine in Las Vegas. "We had all the 'usual suspects,'" including decreased appetite, headache, insomnia, weight decrease, and irritability. The researchers also saw small average increases in pulse and blood pressure with Vyvanse. Vyvanse maker Shire Plc recently submitted a supplemental New Drug Application for use of Vyvanse in the treatment of adolescents aged 13 to 17 years with ADHD. Read More...
Can Pesticides Cause ADHD?
Mon, 17 May 2010 06:47:04 - Pacific Time
A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics says that one type of pesticide commonly used on fruits and vegetables may be contributing to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Researchers took urine from over 1,000 participants ages 8 to 15 and analyzed it for pesticides. 119 of the children had symptoms of ADHD. Those with the highest concentration of pesticides were more likely to have the disorder, according to the study. "It's consistent with other studies that have looked at organophosphate pesticides and have found that exposure of children to organophosphates in early life can cause brain injury. This study builds on those other studies," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. While some doctors are taking this study seriously, they say additional research is still needed to confirm a connection to pesticides. Still, the study's researchers claim even tiny amounts of pesticides may affect brain chemistry in children. The researchers claim the chemicals can have harmful effects on development, including behavioral problems and the ability to think and communicate. "This study only provides a snapshot of one point in time of the association between pesticides and ADHD," Landrigan said. "The next step is we need to do a prospective study, a study that measures pesticide exposure very early in life ... then follow the children over five, six, seven years and see if the early exposure actually causes the disease." Experts also warn any number of other factors could cause ADHD. "There is no need here to panic. What we're talking about here is giving people info that will empower them to be educated consumers," Landrigan said. Read More...
ADHD Linked to Interaction of Genetics and Psychology
Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:58:49 - Pacific Time
The high heritability seen in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may support genotype-environment interactions for the disorder. A new study supports this line of thinking by finding an association between ADHD and a specific serotonin gene variant in the presence of family discourse. The results suggest that "both high and low serotonergic activity may exert risk for ADHD when coupled with psychosocial distress such as children's self-blame in relation to inter-parental conflict," Molly Nikolas, MA, of the Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, and colleagues write in a report published online April 16 in Behavioral and Brain Functions. It is hypothesized that serotonin genes play a role in the etiology of ADHD and may interact with psychosocial stressors in ADHD. To further investigate serotonin genotype-environment interactions in ADHD, the researchers studied 304 boys and girls aged 6 to 18 years — 151 with ADHD and 137 without ADHD. Study participants completed the Children's Perception of Inter-Parental Conflict scale. The trialleic configuration of the key serotonin genetic region 5HTTLPR (long/short polymorphism with A > G substitution) was genotyped, and participants were assigned as having high (n = 78), intermediate (n = 137), or low (n = 89) serotonin transporter activity genotypes. According to the investigators, "a significant and positive relationship" between self-blame and ADHD emerged for those with the high and low serotonergic 5THHLPR genotypes (P < .001). In contrast, there was no relation between self-blame and ADHD for those with the intermediate activity 5HTTLPR genotypes. Children and adolescents with the intermediate activity genotype "appeared to be immune to whatever effects self-blame was having on hyperactivity/impulsivity," the investigators report. "Overall," the investigators say, "these results complement growing evidence suggesting that 5HTTLPR confers liability for ADHD that is activated in particular environments, rather than conferring risk for ADHD directly." Read More...
Pill Popping Kids of America
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:32:38 - Pacific Time
Putting children with behavioral conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on prescription drugs is rife in the US. In his latest documentary, Louis Theroux traveled to the Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a leading center in the treatment of children with mental health problems, to meet the kids, the families and the doctors who believe medication is the only way to tackle their conditions. It is estimated that between five to eight per cent of all American school children have been diagnosed with ADHD. In the UK the figure is 500,000, with around 60,000 of those taking medication. Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Kids, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday. Here, Louis, 39 - who has two sons aged four and two - gives TV Features Writer Kate Jackson his verdict on the issue. The original title for the documentary was Medicalised Normality, with the idea that we're creating these medical categories for things that would have been considered normal in the old days. Now you're not naughty, you're oppositional defiant. You're not fidgety, you've got ADHD. The author was one of these people who thought ADHD was just a technical word for a kid who couldn't sit still. But there are kids who are really being helped by having that diagnosis. There are adults who dropped out of school because they couldn't sit still, and they wish they had been diagnosed with ADHD instead of just being considered a problem child. Having been to Pittsburgh and seen how much the parents believe in the drugs - and how much of a difference it has made in their lives - the issue of medication is much less clear-cut in the author's mind. And as a parent, the idea of medicating a kid is off-putting. But none of these parents was rushing to put their kids on drugs. It was more that the doctors were advising it and the parents were at their wits' end. It would be a very difficult decision and you would have to weigh up where the kid was at and how extreme his or her behavior was getting. Read More...
Synergy between behavioural and pharmacologic interventions for ADHD
Wed, 7 Apr 2010 07:55:54 - Pacific Time
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common mental health disorders affecting children and adolescents. Children with ADHD are excessively restless, impulsive, and distractible and experience difficulties at home and in school. Problems inhibiting behaviour are a common theme for ADHD symptoms. These symptoms are usually treated with stimulant medications, behavioural approaches or a combination of the two. In a new study appearing in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, researchers compared children with ADHD and typically developing children using a video-game task, which required them to focus their attention and to control impulsive actions. The children performed this task under three different motivational conditions, and the children with ADHD were tested both on and off their usual dose of medication. This allowed the researchers to compare the effects of both medication and motivation on the children's response inhibition. Dr Madeleine Groom, corresponding author of the study and Professor Chris Hollis, principal investigator, explained their findings: 'We found that brain electrical activity in children with ADHD when attending to the task and restraining impulsive responses differed from a comparison group of children without ADHD, but became more similar when they took stimulant medication. Intriguingly, rewards and penalties given to improve task performance also changed brain activity, and did so in both children with ADHD and in the control group, although these motivational effects were much smaller than those associated with medication.' These findings suggest that stimulant medication tends to normalise brain function in children with ADHD and enables them to better maintain attention and restrain impulsive responses. Motivational incentives also seem to play a role in modulating similar neural circuits and work additively with medication to improve performance in children with ADHD. Read More...
News Archive
Commonly Used ADHD Medicines Questioned by Study: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:51:41 - Pacific Time: Read More...
ADHD Brain May Be a Little Different: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:24:38 - Pacific Time: Read More...
What are the long-term effects of ADHD meds?: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:58:53 - Pacific Time: Read More...
New study links phthalates to ADHD: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:17:14 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Disconnect Between Brain Regions in ADHD: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:30:12 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Seizure drug limits aggression in kids with ADHD: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:51:34 - Pacific Time: Read More...
St John's Wort Ineffective for ADHD: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 06:07:10 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Drugs not best option for ADHD: report: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:18:40 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Common Plastic Chemical Linked To ADHD: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:03:17 - Pacific Time: Read More...
Startled Flies May Provide Insight Into ADHD: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:25:14 - Pacific Time: Read More...
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...
| Please See Our Catalog of ADHD Books for More Information About ADHD | | Please See Our Catalog of Free Online ADHD Videos for More Information About ADHD |