health 44

t's a familiar story, and most of us reading about Ellen would assume that she did indeed suffer from ADHD. But now researchers from McGill have suggested that there may be an overreporting of attention problems in children with FASD, simply because parents and teachers are using a misplaced basis for comparison. They are testing and comparing children with FASD with children of the same physical or chronological age, rather than with children of the same mental age, which is often quite a lot younger. "Because the link between fetal alcohol syndrome and ADHD is so commonly described in the literature, both parents and teachers are more likely to expect these children to have attention problems," says Prof. Jacob Burack, a professor in McGill's Dept. of Educational and Counselling Psychology and the senior author on a recent study on the subject. "But what teachers often don't recognize is that although the child they are dealing with is eleven years ...

LMTK3, pictured right here, is ample in two mind areas: the cerebral cortex, which coordinates notion, motion, and thought, and the hippocampus , which governs reminiscence and studying. Credit score: Picture courtesy of Okinawa Institute of Science and Expertise - OIST The 60 trillion cells that comprise our our bodies talk always. Data travels when chemical compounds launched by some cells are acquired by receptors within the membrane of one other cell. In a paper printed within the Journal of Neuroscience, the OIST Cell Sign Unit, led by Professor Tadashi Yamamoto, reported that mice missing an intracellular trafficking protein referred to as LMTK3, are hyperactive. Hyperactivity is a behavioral dysfunction that reveals signs together with restlessness, lack of coordination, and aggressive habits. Figuring out the genetic components that contribute to such behaviors could assist to elucidate...

The findings point to the potential of rfMRI to help provide objectively accurate, early diagnosis of a disorder that affects approximately 5 percent of children and adolescents worldwide. ADHD is a disorder characterized by age-inappropriate degrees of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Functional MRI studies, which measure brain activity when a person is focused on a particular task, have implicated the brain's frontostriatal circuit, a collection of neural pathways in the frontal lobe of the brain that helps control behavior. However, the specific brain physiology underlying ADHD remains poorly understood. For the new study, researchers used rfMRI, a relatively new technique that assesses neural function when the brain is not focused on a specific task. The technique is useful for exploring the brain's functional organization independent of task performance. The researchers compared rfMRI results in 33 boys with ADHD, ages 6 to 16, with those of 32 similar...

Almost one in 5 college students at an Ivy League school reported misusing a prescription stimulant whereas finding out, and one-third of scholars didn't view such misuse as dishonest. Credit score: © locoleal / Fotolia Almost one in 5 college students at an Ivy League school reported misusing a prescription stimulant whereas finding out, and one-third of scholars didn't view such misuse as dishonest, in accordance with a research to be offered Saturday, Could three, on the Pediatric Educational Societies (PAS) annual assembly in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Stimulants are used to deal with attention-deficit/hyperactivity dysfunction (ADHD). Current research have proven that college students with out ADHD are misusing these drugs in hopes of gaining an educational edge. This research appeared on the prevalence of medicine misuse at a extremely selective school and whether or n...

The results showed that while almost half of all physicians surveyed believe diversion is common among teens with ADHD, the majority never received training on the topic. Furthermore, about one-third of physicians rarely counsel teens about the health and legal consequences of diverting stimulating medication and don't feel qualified to do so. "Diversion of stimulation medications for ADHD by high school and college students is widespread as those with ADHD are often sharing pills with their peers, who don't have the condition, to try to improve their academic performance," said Andrew Adesman, MD, senior investigator and chief of developmental behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York. "Many pediatric colleagues don't feel adequate in counseling their ADHD patients about diverting stimulant medications or are unfamiliar with some of the legal and health consequences of non-ADHD patients taking an unprescribed controlled ...

Researchers found that many children with ADHD also face challenges such as poverty, divorce, neighborhood violence and substance abuse among family members. "Our findings suggest that children with ADHD experience significantly higher rates of trauma than those without ADHD," said lead author Nicole M. Brown, MD, MPH, MHS, FAAP. "Providers may focus on ADHD as the primary diagnosis and overlook the possible presence of a trauma history, which may impact treatment." Dr. Brown and her colleagues analyzed data from the 2011 National Survey of Children's Health. They identified 65,680 children ages 6-17 years whose parents answered questions regarding ADHD diagnosis, severity and medication use as well as nine adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): poverty, divorce, death of a parent/guardian, domestic violence, neighborhood violence , substance abuse, incarceration, familial mental illness and discrimination. About 12 percent of the children were diagnosed ...

The findings appear online May 12, 2014, in the journal  Pediatrics . "Given that individuals with ADHD are more likely to smoke, our study supports the use of stimulant treatment to reduce the likelihood of smoking in youth with ADHD ," said senior author Scott Kollins, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Duke ADHD Program. "The risk is further lowered when adherence to medication treatment is consistent, presumably since this increases the chances that symptoms are managed effectively." ADHD is a common childhood disorder that can continue through adolescence and adulthood, and is characterized by hyperactivity, difficulty paying attention and impulsivity. It is most commonly treated with stimulant medication (such as Vyvanse or Concerta), as well as with behavior therapy or a combination of the two. Individuals with ADHD smoke at rates significantly higher than the general population, and they often start earlier. St...

The results of the research are published online May 13 by the journal  Molecular Psychiatry . "If this finding is confirmed, it could be useful," says study leader Gerald Nestadt, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of Johns Hopkins' Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Program. "We might ultimately be able to identify new drugs that could help people with this often disabling disorder, one for which current medications work only 60 to 70 percent of the time." Nestadt and his team conducted what is known as a genome-wide association study, scanning the genomes of more than 1,400 people with OCD and more than 1,000 close relatives of people with the mental disorder. A significant association was identified in OCD patients near a gene called protein tyrosine phosphokinase (PTPRD). OCD is a condition marked by thoughts and images that chronically intrude in the mind and...

Prenatal tobacco smoke exposure is a risk factor for adverse physical and mental outcomes in children. Growing evidence suggests that smoking during pregnancy may increase the risk of psychopathology such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Research on ADHD has suggested that individuals with the disorder may exhibit poor inhibitory control. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed at age 25 years on young adults who had been followed since birth to examine the effect of prenatal tobacco smoke exposure on neural activity implicated in externalizing disorders, such as ADHD, with measures of inhibitory control. Lifetime ADHD symptoms were measured over a period of 13 years (from 2 to 15 years of age). The study included 178 mothers (140 of whom were nonsmokers) and 175 offspring for whom ADHD symptoms were measured throughout childhood. Individuals prenatally exposed to tobacco smoke exhibited less activity in regions of the brain in response to a task t...

They say findings from their study, published online today in  Neuron , may increase the understanding of underlying causes of ADHD, potentially facilitating the development of more individualized treatment strategies. The scientists looked at dopaminergic neurons, which regulate pleasure, motivation, reward, and cognition, and have been implicated in development of ADHD. They uncovered a receptor system that is critical, during embryonic development, for correct wiring of the dopaminergic brain area. But they also discovered that after brain maturation, a cut in the same receptor, SorCS2, produces a two-chain receptor that induces cell death following damage to the peripheral nervous system. The researchers report that the SorCS2 receptor functions as a molecular switch between apparently opposing effects in proBDNF. ProBDNF is a neuronal growth factor that helps select cells that are most beneficial to the nervous system, while eliminating those that are less favorable i...