Study: Use of methylphenidate-based ADHD medication increases the risk of heart problems

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Methylphenidate_pillsADHD med­ica­tion enhances the risk of heart prob­lems in chil­dren (Sci­ence Nordic):

“The risk of devel­op­ing heart prob­lems is twice as big for chil­dren tak­ing med­i­cine for Atten­tion Deficit-Hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (ADHD) when com­pared to chil­dren not receiv­ing the medicine…The study builds on data from 714,000 chil­dren born in 1990–1999…The study cov­ered near­ly all types of ADHD med­i­cine. Methylphenidate-based med­ica­tions account for 98 per cent of treat­ments. This group of med­ica­tion is sold under the brands Con­cer­ta, Methylin, Rital­in, Equasym XL, Mot­iron and Medikinet…

To make sure that the mea­sured dif­fer­ence was not due to the dis­or­der itself, the sci­en­tists com­pared chil­dren with ADHD diag­no­sis, who were receiv­ing med­i­cine, with oth­er ADHD diag­nosed chil­dren, who were not receiv­ing medicine.??The sci­en­tists found, that the haz­ard ratio for chil­dren receiv­ing ADHD med­i­cine was 120 per cent high­er, than chil­dren not get­ting medicine…

Tine Houmann empha­sis­es that doc­tors and par­ents should not be scared of results like those pub­lished in the study. “It is impor­tant that we do not become so afraid of rare side effects that we do not give med­i­cine to chil­dren with ADHD. Because the prob­lems and risks con­nect­ed to unmed­icat­ed ADHD are severe. It can lead to addic­tion, crime and devel­op­ing psy­chi­atric diseases”…Søren Dals­gaard believes that his study con­firms that doc­tors must think twice when pre­scrib­ing ADHD medicine.”

Study: Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Safe­ty of Stim­u­lants in Chil­dren with Atten­tion-Deficit/Hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der: A Nation­wide Prospec­tive Cohort Study (Jour­nal of Child and Ado­les­cent Psychopharmacology)

  • Abstract: The pur­pose of this study was to deter­mine whether stim­u­lant users are at high­er risk of a lat­er car­dio­vas­cu­lar event than are non-users, exam­in­ing this asso­ci­a­tion in both a nation­al cohort and a pop­u­la­tion-based sam­ple of chil­dren and ado­les­cents diag­nosed with atten­tion-deficit/hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD)…We con­duct­ed a lon­gi­tu­di­nal, prospec­tive cohort study of all chil­dren born in Den­mark between 1990 and 1999. With­in this cohort, chil­dren with ADHD were iden­ti­fied. Data from nation­al health reg­is­ters on psy­chi­atric and somat­ic diag­noses, stim­u­lant pre­scrip­tions, car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors, pre- and peri­na­tal and sociode­mo­graph­ic covari­ates in all chil­dren and their par­ents were merged, using the unique per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion number…Results: In the total pop­u­la­tion (n=714,258 con­tribut­ing a total of 6,767,982 per­son-years) use of stim­u­lants increased the risk of a car­dio­vas­cu­lar event. In chil­dren with ADHD (n=8300) stim­u­lant treat­ment also increased the risk of a car­dio­vas­cu­lar event…with a com­plex time-depen­dent dose-response relationship…Cardiovascular events were rare but twice as like­ly in stim­u­lant users as in non-users, both in the total nation­al pop­u­la­tion and in chil­dren with ADHD.

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