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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Mariah Russell

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Mariah Russell

First direct evidence that ADHD is a genetic disorder: Children with ADHD more likely t... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...100929191312.htm

shared by Mariah Russell on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • First Direct Evidence That ADHD Is a Genetic Disorder: Children With ADHD More Likely to Have Missing or Duplicated Segments of DNA
  • ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder -- in other words, that the brains of children with the disorder differ from those of other children.
  • New research provides the first direct evidence that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a genetic condition. Scientists at Cardiff University found that children with ADHD were more likely to have small segments of their DNA duplicated or missing than other children.
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  • "Too often, people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. As a clinician, it was clear to me that this was unlikely to be the case. Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease and that the brains of children with this condition develop differently to those of other children."
  • The condition is highly heritable -- children with ADHD are statistically more likely to also have a parent with the condition and a child with an identical twin with ADHD has a three in four chance of also having the condition.
  • "Children with ADHD have a significantly higher rate of missing or duplicated DNA segments compared to other children and we have seen a clear genetic link between these segments and other brain disorders," explains Dr Nigel Williams. "These findings give us tantalising clues to the changes that can lead to ADHD."
  • ADHD is not caused by a single genetic change, but is likely caused by a number of genetic changes, including CNVs, interacting with a child's environment," explains Dr Kate Langley.
Mariah Russell

Nearly one million children in U.S. potentially misdiagnosed with ADHD, study finds - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...100817103342.htm

shared by Mariah Russell on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Nearly One Million Children in U.S. Potentially Misdiagnosed With ADHD, Study Finds
  • Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest -- and most immature
  • It also wastes an estimated $320 million-$500 million a year on unnecessary medication -- some $80 million-$90 million of it paid by Medicaid, he said.
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  • ADHD diagnoses depend on a child's age relative to classmates and the teacher's perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.
  • ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder for kids in the United States, with at least 4.5 million diagnoses among children under age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • However, there are no neurological markers for ADHD
  • Overall, the study found that about 20 percent -- or 900,000 -- of the 4.5 million children currently identified as having ADHD likely have been misdiagnosed.
Mariah Russell

Functional brain pathways disrupted in children with ADHD - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...111128120138.htm

shared by Mariah Russell on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • researchers have identified abnormalities in the brains of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that may serve as a biomarker for the disorder,
  • ADHD is one of the most common childhood disorders, affecting an estimated five to eight percent of school-aged children.
  • "Diagnosing ADHD is very difficult because of its wide variety of behavioral symptoms," said lead researcher Xiaobo Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
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  • Compared to the normal control group, the children with ADHD showed abnormal functional activity in several regions of the brain involved in the processing of visual attention information
  • "What this tells us is that children with ADHD are using partially different functional brain pathways to process this information, which may be caused by impaired white matter pathways involved in visual attention information processing," Dr. Li said.
  • According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is no single test capable of diagnosing a child with the disorder. As a result, difficult children are often incorrectly labeled with ADHD while other children with the disorder remain undiagnosed.
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