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Long-term Use of ADHD Meds: No Benefit, Impact on Growth
Liam Davenport
|March 20, 2017
Children who are treated with stimulant medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and who continue that treatment into adulthood may experience a suppression of height as adults without experiencing any ongoing reductions in symptoms, results of a long-term follow-up study indicate.
The Multimodal Treatment Study (MTA) showed that although the number of children with ADHD who consistently received treatment into adulthood is relatively small, those who continued to receive these medications showed no differences in symptom severity in comparision those who took treatment holidays or who stopped treatment all together.
However, the average adult height of children who continued treatment was more than 2 cm shorter than those who stopped treatment. For patients who continue to receive treatment, the cumulative d,l-methylphenidate equivalent (ME) doses may run to more than 100,000 mg.
These findings suggest that "childhood-onset ADHD is a chronic disorder with persistence of symptoms into adulthood...and extended use of stimulant medication from childhood through adolescence is associated with suppression of adult height but is not associated with reduced symptom severity," the authors, led by James M. Swanson, PhD, director of the Child Development Center and professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, write.
The study was published online March 10 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Concern Is Not With Growth but Efficacy
The study is a continuation of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD, which was initially a 14-month randomized controlled trial that compared medication management, behavior modification, a combination of both, or treatment as usual for a community comparison in 579 children with ADHD aged 7.0 to 9.9 years.
The trial was then transitioned into a long-term observational study in which 515 original study participants took part, as well as 289 individuals from the same schools, who were recruited to act as a local normal comparison group. Of these control participants, 258 did not have ADHD.
The participants were assessed eight times 2 to 16 years after baseline. The number of days on which patients were treated with stimulant medication and the daily doses that were administered since the previous assessment were recorded.
Using preestablished cutoffs for medication use, participants were classified as consistent, inconsistent, or negligible users. After they had reached adulthood, the participants completed the Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scale to determine symptom persistence.
Follow-up data in adulthood were available for 92.4% of the ADHD group and for 93.4% of the non-ADHD comparison group who started the observational phase. The majority of adult assessments were from the 16-year follow-up.
During follow-up, there was a fourfold decrease in the overall percentage of ADHD patients who were classified as having greater than minimal use of medication use; 23.5% were classified as having a negligible pattern of medication use; 61.9% as having an inconsistent pattern; and 7.4% as having a consistent pattern.
The prospective average cumulative ME doses for the three groups were calculated to be 2153 mg, 60,567 mg, and 117,102 mg, respectively.
The researchers found that there was a significant difference in average scores for symptom severity between the overall ADHD group and the comparison group, at a mean difference of 0.514 (P < .0001).
There was also a significant difference between average parent-report and self-report symptom severity scores, at 0.21 (P < .0001), suggesting that there was a source discrepancy.
However, the team found no significant difference in average symptom scores between the negligible, inconsistent, and consistent medication use groups, at 0.063 (P = .2331) for consistent/inconsistent vs negligible groups, and -0.011 (P = .9003) for consistent vs inconsistent groups, indicating that ongoing medication use did not reduce symptom severity.
With respect to adult height, it was determined that participants in the overall ADHD group were shorter by a significant 1.29 ± 0.55 cm than those in the comparison group (P < .01).
Moreover, individuals in the consistent/inconsistent groups were significantly shorter than those in the negligible group, at an average height reduction of 2.55 ± 0.73 cm (P < .0005). Those in the consistent group were on average 2.36 ± 1.13 cm shorter than those in the inconsistent group, a difference that was again significant (P = .04).
Dr Swanson told Medscape Medical News that the evidence that fewer than 10% of ADHD participants in the study were consistently using stimulant medications into adulthood is "really remarkable," as they were being treated "in the modern era in the United States, when medication use was increasing tremendously."
The question, he said, is not about growth but about efficacy.
"Why do people stop? Is the treatment no longer effective? That's one hypothesis. Or is it that people just don't want to take an effective medication? That's a critical question that is also generated by this prospective, long-term follow-up," he said.
Dr Swanson noted that even when medication was continued, there was "no clear benefit" in comparison with children who never took it or who stopped taking it.
"Certainly it's going to work the next day and the next week and the next year, and maybe some of the next 2 years, but my position is that it probably shouldn't be considered a medication that has a long-term benefit, and you shouldn't give it to get a long-term benefit if there's no longer a benefit," he said.
He also pointed out another question: was there "something special about the group that continued in treatment? Is it, in other words, not an effect of medication but an effect of those who were treated with medication?"
Dr Swanson said that the interesting thing about the group that continued to be treated was that they "had a lot of advantages," in that their family income was higher, and their IQ was slightly higher than those who did not continue treatment.
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Neurofeedback works: Van der Kolk
KATHY BROUS 8/12/161:32 PM
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk MD just posted a webinar on Neurofeedback that knocked me out. "Nothing I know can do that," he said, on first seeing Neurofeedback's results. This changes the map of trauma healing. Watch now; it may not be up long.
I had a big emotional reaction to his revelations on how my brain still doesn't work in some areas . Click for van der Kolk video and to see what happened to me:http://attachmentdisorderheali...edback-van-der-kolk/
Please forward this your lists of therapists, colleagues, anyone interested in healing. Dr. van der Kolk has promoted EMDR, yoga, and body work for decades. Now folks with early trauma (or any kind of trauma) can be confident in checking out neurofeedback before choosing a healing mode.
I've so far done 10 months of neurofeedback and the healing is enormous. But it's not well-known enough or funded. Getting the word out could stop a lot of suffering.
At minute 20, van der Kolk shows graphics on how Sebern Fisher introduced him to neurofeedback. "She showed me drawings that traumatized kids did of their families (stick figures), then how they developed after 20 weeks of neurofeedback (real people), after 40 weeks (an attached group), and I was blown away by their development," he says.
"There's nothing I know that can do that, I thought," he said. "When you see something like that, you pay attention. Can my psychoanalysis do that? Can my acceptance and commitment therapy do that? Can my friends who do EMDR or Somatic Experiencing do that? No. Nothing I know of can do THAT. Time to learn new things."
Weight loss study just published in nature magazine