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The population-based study examines the association between IHC and ADHD. Researchers examined the electronic health records of nearly 82,000 children ages 5 years old and found that prenatal exposure to IHC -- especially birth asphyxia, neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, and preeclampsia -- was associated with a 16 percent greater risk of developing ADHD. Specifically, exposure to birth asphyxia was associated with a 26 percent greater risk of developing ADHD, exposure to neonatal respiratory distress syndrome was associated with a 47 percent greater risk, and exposure to preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy) was associated with a 34 percent greater risk. The study also found that the increased risk of ADHD remained the same across all race and ethnicity groups. "Previous studies have found that hypoxic injury during fetal development leads to significant structural and functional brain injuries in the offspring," said study lead author Darios Getahu...

Prof. Dar and fellow researcher Dr. Amitai Abramovitch, who completed his PhD under Prof. Dar's supervision, have determined that despite appearances, OCD and ACHD are far more different than alike. While groups of both OCD and ADHD patients were found to have difficulty controlling their abnormal impulses in a laboratory setting, only the ADHD group had significant problems with these impulses in the real world. According to Prof. Dar, this shows that while OCD and ADHD may appear similar on a behavioral level, the mechanism behind the two disorders differs greatly. People with ADHD are impulsive risk-takers, rarely reflecting on the consequences of their actions. In contrast, people with OCD are all too concerned with consequences, causing hesitancy, difficulty in decision-making, and the tendency to over-control and over-plan. Their findings, published in the  Journal of Neuropsychology , draw a clear distinction between OCD and ADHD and provide more accurate guidelines ...

This study was led by researchers from the Interactive Autism Network, a project of the Kennedy Krieger Institute that is the nation's first online autism registry with participants from 47 states, making it the largest collection of autism data in the world. "Recent research indicates that children receiving special education services are at risk of being victimized at higher rates than regular education students," says Dr. Paul Law, senior study author and director of the Interactive Autism Network at Kennedy Krieger. "Our findings show that not only are these children being bullied more, but they are also experiencing significant short-term, and likely long-term, effects of being bullied." Participants in the study included parents of 1,221 children with ASD recruited through an online questionnaire. Researchers utilized the  Bullying and School Experiences of Children with ASD Survey , a 63-item questionnaire, to collect key data from parents regardin...

The prevalence of ADHD is between 8% and 12% among the infant-adolescent population worldwide , and 50% continue with the symptoms into adult life. Children with ADHD have difficulty paying attention, do not complete the tasks they have been assigned and are frequently distracted. They may also display impulsive behaviour and excessive, inappropriate activity in the context they find themselves in, and experience great difficulty restraining their impulses. "All these symptoms seriously affect the social, academic and working life of the individuals, and impact greatly upon their families and milieu close to them," says Molano. In view of the problems existing in diagnosing ADHD patients and deciding about their treatment, this PhD thesis set out to develop and clinically validate a genotyping tool that could help to confirm the diagnosis, to predict how it will evolve, and to select the most suitable pharmacological treatment in each case. Molano studied how genetic p...

The study examined the electronic health r ecords of nearly 850,000 ethnically diverse children, aged 5 to 11 years, who received care at Kaiser Permanente Southern California between 2001 and 2010. It found that among these children, 4.9 percent, or 39,200, had a diagnosis of ADHD, with white and black children more likely to be diagnosed with the neurobehavioral disorder than Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islander children. For instance, in 2010, 5.6 percent of white children in the study had an ADHD diagnosis; 4.1 percent of blacks; 2.5 percent of Hispanics; and 1.2 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders. The study also examined increases in the rates of first-time ADHD diagnosis. Researchers found that the incidence of newly diagnosed ADHD cases rose from 2.5 percent in 2001 to 3.1 percent in 2010 -- a relative increase of 24 percent. Black children showed the greatest increase in ADHD incidence, from 2.6 percent of all black children 5 to 11 years of age in 2001 to 4.1 percent in 2...

It is often difficult for people to understand what leads to criminal behavior in children or teens. But by the time a juvenile is arrested, or referred to the juvenile court system, the child generally has displayed a pattern of antisocial behavior, said Matt DeLisi, professor of sociology at Iowa State University. In some extreme cases, DeLisi said children as young as 5 years old are committing crimes. So when that child becomes an adult, he or she may already have a lengthy criminal record. That is why DeLisi, and the team of researchers, wants to understand what contributes to this behavior in order to correct it. "With onset in criminal careers, the first sign of that problem behavior is an indicator of how severe it will be," DeLisi said. "If you can help them, you save a ton of money and you save a lot of problems. But it's just the issue of correctly identifying them and that raises a bunch of ethical and other issues." The connection between th...

The authors base their findings on children born to 528 pregnant women between 2000 and 2004 in the North West of England. Just fewer than half the mums (243) had epilepsy, all but 34 of whom took antiepileptic drugs during their pregnancy. Fifty nine mums took carbamazepine; 59 took valproate; 36 took lamotrigine; 41 took a combination; and 15 took other drugs. The children's physical and intellectual development was assessed at the ages of 12 months, three and six years. Information was also obtained from their mothers about whether they had had to consult specialists about their child's behaviour, development, educational progress or health. Full data on all three assessments were available for 415 children. In all, 19 children had been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder by the time they were six years old, three of whom also had a physical abnormality. Of these, 12 had a form of autism, one of whom was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity ...

This study is the first to examine teenage substance abuse and treatment for ADHD in a large multi-site sample. It also is the first to recognize that increased use of cigarettes in teenagers with ADHD histories commonly occurs with use of other substances such as alcohol and marijuana. "This study underscores the significance of the substance abuse risk for both boys and girls with childhood ADHD," said Brooke Molina, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and lead author of the report. "These findings also are the strongest test to date of the association between medication for ADHD and teenage substance abuse." Researchers studied nearly 600 children over an eight-year period from childhood through adolescence to test the hypothesis that children with ADHD have increased risk of substance use and abuse or dependence in adolescence. Molina and colleagues also examined substance abuse patterns, the ef...

The study, published online Feb. 11 in the  Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry , is the largest long-term analysis to date of preschoolers with ADHD, the investigators say, and sheds much-needed light on the natural course of a condition that is being diagnosed at an increasingly earlier age. "ADHD is becoming a more common diagnosis in early childhood, so understanding how the disorder progresses in this age group is critical," says lead investigator Mark Riddle, M.D., a pediatric psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "We found that ADHD in preschoolers is a chronic and rather persistent condition, one that requires better long-term behavioral and pharmacological treatments than we currently have." The study shows that nearly 90 percent of the 186 youngsters followed continued to struggle with ADHD symptoms six years after diagnosis. Children taking ADHD medication had just as severe symptoms as those who were ...

"We found that a high-fat diet rapidly affected dopamine metabolism in the brains of juvenile mice, triggering anxious behaviors and learning deficiencies. Interestingly, when methylphenidate (Ritalin) was administered, the learning and memory problems went away," said Gregory Freund, a professor in the U of I College of Medicine and a member of the university's Division of Nutritional Sciences. The research was published in  Psychoneuroendocrinology . Freund said that altered dopamine signaling in the brain is common to both ADHD and the overweight or obese state. "And an increase in the number of dopamine metabolites is associated with anxiety behaviors in children," he added. Intrigued by the recent upsurge in both child obesity and adverse childhood psychological conditions, including impulsivity, depression, and ADHD, Freund's team examined the short-term effects of a high-fat (60% calories from fat) versus a low-fat (10% calories from fat) diet...