Addiction, ADHD, Author Interviews, Eating Disorders / 29.01.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Kenneth Koblan PhD Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Fort Lee, NJ and Marlborough, MA Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Koblan: Assessing abuse potential is important in the clinical development process for any therapy affecting the central nervous system, especially those that may act on dopamine and norepinephrine neurotransmitter systems. Human abuse liability studies are conducted to evaluate the abuse potential associated with drugs that affect the central nervous system. Drugs that increase dopamine levels may be associated with stimulant effects and abuse (e.g., cocaine and amphetamine), whereas drugs that increase serotonin and/or norepinephrine levels are not generally associated with recreational abuse (e.g., selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Among drugs with effects on dopamine neurotransmission, slowing the rate of absorption is thought to reduce abuse potential, and increasing the rate of elimination is thought to reduce rewarding effects and abuse liability due to sustained elevations in drug concentrations resulting in sustained inhibition of dopamine transporters (DAT). Dasotraline is an investigational dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor from Sunovion in late-stage development to evaluate its use in treating the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and binge-eating disorder (BED). Dasotraline has slow absorption and elimination that supports the potential for plasma concentrations yielding a continuous therapeutic effect over the 24-hour dosing interval at steady state. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, BMJ, Pharmacology / 26.11.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Ole Jakob Storebø Region Zealand, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Department, Roskilde Region Zealand Psychiatry Psychiatric Research Unit, Slagelse University of Southern Denmark Department of Psychology Faculty of Health Science, Odense Denmark Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Storebø: Despite widespread use of methylphenidate for the treatment of children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a comprehensive systematic review of its benefits and harms has not yet been conducted. Over the past 15 years, several reviews investigating the efficacy of methylphenidate for ADHD (with or without meta-analyses) have been published. Each of these reviews, however, has several shortcomings and these are described in detail in the review. The most important concerns are that none of these reviews are based on a pre-published protocol, and most assessed neither the risk of bias (systematic errors) of included trials nor adverse events. Moreover, none of these reviews considered the risk of random errors. Therefore, their interpretation of findings is unlikely to have taken into account the poor reporting of adverse events, the impact of combining data from small trial samples, or the impact of risk of bias on their analyses; information about adverse events is also missing from several RCTs. Because of this it is our opinion that these previous reviews might have overestimated the true treatment effect. We found that Methylphenidate may improve ADHD symptoms, general behaviour and quality of life in children and adolescents aged 18 years and younger with ADHD. We rated the evidence to be of very low quality and, as a result, we cannot be certain about the magnitude of the effects from the meta-analyses. The evidence is limited by serious risk of bias in the included trials, under-reporting of relevant outcome data, and a high level of statistical variation between the results. We found no evidence for serious adverse events, but a lot of non-serious adverse events. Most of these are well known but the number of adverse events might even be higher than the number we found due to underreporting of adverse events. We know very little about the long term effects or harms as most of the trials in our review did not measure outcomes beyond 6 months. The risk of rare, serious adverse events seem low over the short duration of follow-up of the trials that reported on harms, but in general there was inadequate reporting of adverse events in many trials. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Nature, NYU / 22.10.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael M. Halassa, MD, PhD, Assistant professor Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Physiology The Neuroscience Institute Depts. of Psychitatry Langone Medical Center New York, NY 10016 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Halassa:  Attention is a vital aspect of our daily life and our minds are not merely a reflection of the outside world, but rather a result of careful selection of inputs that are relevant. In fact, if we indiscriminately open up our senses to what’s out there, we would be totally overwhelmed. Selecting relevant inputs and suppressing distractors is what we call attention, and as humans we are able to attend in a highly intentional manner. Meaning, we choose what to pay attention to, and we do so based on context. If you’re driving and getting directions from your GPS, you’ll be intentionally splitting your attention between your vision and hearing. Now, in one context, you might have just updated the GPS software, so you know it’s reliable; this would allow you to intentionally pay attention more to the voice coming from the GPS. In another context, the GPS software may be outdated making voice instructions unreliable. This context would prompt you to direct your attention more towards using visual navigation cues and less to the GPS voice. How the brain intentionally and dynamically directs attention based context is unknown. The main strength of our study is that we were able to study context-dependent attention in mice. Mice are unique models because they provide genetic tools to study brain circuits. Meaning, we can turn circuits on and off very precisely in the mouse, and in a way we cannot do in other experimental animals. The inability to do these types of manipulations has been the major roadblock for progress in understanding what brain circuits mediate attention and its intentional allocation. Because we couldn’t train mice to drive and listen to the GPS, we decided to do something much simpler. Based on context (the type of background noise in the experimental enclosure), a mouse had to select between conflicting visual and auditory stimuli in order to retrieve a milk reward. Mice love milk; it turns out, and will work tirelessly to do well on getting it. Each trial, the mouse is told ‘you need to pick the light flash’ or ‘you need to pick the auditory sweep’; these stimuli appeared on either side of the mouse randomly so the animal really had to pay attention in order to get its reward. It also had to take the context into account. We found that mice did this task, and as humans would do, they were reliant on the prefrontal cortex for determining the appropriate context. The major finding was that the prefrontal cortex changed the sensitivity of the brain to incoming stimuli (meaning, made the visual stimulus brighter when the mouse cared about vision and made the auditory stimulus louder when the mouse cared about hearing), by influencing activity in the thalamus. The thalamus is the major early relay station in the brain. The prefrontal cortex does that by instructing the brain’s switchboard, known as the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) to control how much visual or auditory information the thalamus was letting through. So in a sense, we discovered that executive function, represented by the prefrontal cortex, can talk to ‘attentional filters’ in the thalamus to determine what ultimately is selected from the outside environment to build our internal world. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Memory / 28.08.2015

Dr. Graham Murray PhD University Lecturer Department of Psychiatry Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge UKMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Graham Murray PhD University Lecturer Department of Psychiatry Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge UK Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Murray: There is debate about the extent to which ADHD persists into adulthood, with estimates suggesting that between 10-50% of children still have ADHD in adulthood. Diagnosis (whether in childhood or adulthood) is currently reliant on meeting symptom checklists (such as the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), and a current diagnosis is often the prerequisite to access health care from psychiatric services. We decided to follow up a sample of 49 teens who all had a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD at age 16. We also followed a control group made up of comparison healthy volunteers from the same social, ethnic and geographical background. When we used the symptom checklist criteria of persistence, only 10% of patients still met ADHD diagnostic criteria in adulthood. However, there is more to ADHD than this. When it comes to adult brain structure and function, it didn’t make any difference whether symptom checklists were still met or not. On reaching adulthood, the adolescent ADHD group show reduced brain volume in the caudate nucleus - a key brain region that supports a host of cognitive functions, including working memory function. When we assessed working memory ability, we noted persistent problems in the adolescent ADHD group, with a third of the adolescent ADHD sample failing the memory test. The poor memory scores seemed to relate to a lack of responsiveness in the activity of the caudate nucleus that we could detect using functional MRI scans. In the control group, when the memory questions became more difficult, the caudate nucleus became more active, and this appeared to help the control group perform well; in the adolescent ADHD group, the caudate nucleus kept the same level of activity throughout the test. It was as if, for the controls, when the test got harder, the caudate nucleus went up a gear in its activity, and this is likely to have helped solve the memory problems. But for the adolescence ADHD group, the caudate couldn’t go up a gear when the test became harder, and this likely resulted in poorer performance.  (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, OBGYNE / 12.08.2015

Scott A. Adler, Ph.D. Associate Professor Coordinator Developmental Science Graduate Program Dept. of Psychology & Centre for Vision Research Visual and Cognitive Development Project York University Toronto, Ontario CanadaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Scott A. Adler, Ph.D. Associate Professor Coordinator Developmental Science Graduate Program Dept. of Psychology & Centre for Vision Research Visual and Cognitive Development Project York University Toronto, Ontario Canada   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Adler: Experiences that we have early in life clearly have an impact on our brain development and behavior as we get older.  Numerous studies have detailed these experiences, ranging from how we were fed as a baby to how many languages we hear to traumatic events.  These experiences have been shown to influence formation, maintenance, and pruning of the networks of synaptic connections in our brain's that impact all manner of thought and behavior.  Yet, the impact of one of the earliest experiences, that of being born, on brain and psychological behavior has not before been explored.  A recent study with rat pups has strongly suggested that the birth process has a definite impact on initial brain development.  If that is the case, what happens if the infant's birth is one in which she does not experience the natural birth process, such as occurs with caesarean section births? Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Adler: There were two main findings from this study.  We measured the speed and timing of infants' saccadic eye movements, which are overt indicators of attention, relative to the onset of visual events on a computer monitor.  Moving attention and eye movements can occur through two general classes of processes.  The first is bottom-up mechanisms in which attention is moved reactively and automatically to the appearance or existence of unique and salient events in the world.  In this case, where attention goes is essentially controlled by the events in the world. The second is top-down mechanisms in which we move attention voluntarily to what we determine to be relevant event in the world based on our own cognitive biases and goals. This study found that 3-month-old infants born by caesarean section were significantly slower to move attention and make eye movements in reaction to the occurrence of visual events on the basis of bottom-up mechanisms than were infants born vaginally.  In contrast, there was difference between infants in moving attention and making eye movements in anticipation of the appearance of visual events on the basis of top-down mechanisms.  Additionally, maternal age, which has been shown to be related to the occurrence of caesarean sections, was found not to be related to the current effects. (more…)
ADHD, AHRQ, Author Interviews, CDC / 17.04.2015

Susanna N. Visser, DrPH Epidemiologist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities CDCMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Susanna N. Visser, DrPH Epidemiologist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities CDC   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Visser: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD is one of the most common chronic conditions of childhood. It often persists into adulthood. When children diagnosed with ADHD receive proper treatment, they have the best chance of thriving at home, doing well at school, and making and keeping friends. In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) updated their guidelines for ADHD treatment. The new guidelines give this advice to healthcare providers, psychologists, educators, and parents of children with ADHD:
  • For preschoolers ages 4-5 with ADHD, use behavioral therapy before medication.
  • For older children and teens with ADHD, use behavioral therapy along with medication.
In order to learn more about ADHD treatment patterns, CDC researchers looked at data from a national sample of children with special health care needs, ages 4-17 years, collected in 2009-10 just before the release of the 2011 guidelines. We found that most children with ADHD received either medication treatment or behavioral therapy as well as some other form of ADHD therapy to help. However, we also found that many children were not receiving treatment in the way it was outlined in the 2011 best practice guidelines.
  • Less than 1 in 3 children with ADHD received both medication treatment and behavioral therapy, the preferred treatment approach for children ages 6 and older.
  • Only half of preschoolers (4-5 years of age) with ADHD received behavioral therapy, which is now the recommended first-line treatment for this group.
  • About half of preschoolers with ADHD were taking medication for ADHD, and about 1 in 4 were treated only with medication.
(more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, FASEB, Occupational Health, Toxin Research / 06.02.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jason R. Richardson MS,PhD DABT Associate Professor Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Resident Member Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute Piscataway, NJ MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Richardson:  Although ADHD is often though of as a genetic disorder, no single gene can explain more than a fraction of the cases. This suggests that environmental factors are likely to interact with genetic susceptibility to increase risk for ADHD. Our study reports that exposure of pregnant mice to relatively low levels of a commonly used pesticide reproduces the behavioral effects of ADHD in their offspring. Because the study was in animals, we wanted to see if there was any association in humans. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention we found that children and adolescents with elevated levels of metabolites of these pesticides in their urine, which indicates exposure, were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. (more…)
Addiction, ADHD, Author Interviews / 13.12.2014

William Brinkman, MD, MEd, MSc Associate Professor of Pediatrics Director, Research Section, Division of General & Community Pediatrics Research Director, Cincinnati Pediatric Research Group James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical CenterMedicalResearch.com Interview with: William Brinkman, MD, MEd, MSc Associate Professor of Pediatrics Director, Research Section, Division of General & Community Pediatrics Research Director, Cincinnati Pediatric Research Group James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Dr. Brinkman: Early onset of substance use is a significant public health concern as those who use substances before the mid-teen years are more likely to develop dependence than those who start later. The association of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD) with tobacco and alcohol use has not been assessed in a young adolescent sample representative of the U.S. population. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews / 17.10.2014

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joanna Martin, PhD student MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics Institute of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study? Response: In this study, we found that genetic risks which are collectively important for ADHD diagnosis also predict higher levels of traits of hyperactivity/impulsiveness, inattention and  pragmatic language difficulties in childhood in the general population. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Genetic Research, Nature / 19.06.2014

Michele Jacob, Ph.D. Professor of Neuroscience Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences Tufts UniversityMedicalResearch.com Interview with Michele Jacob, Ph.D. Professor of Neuroscience Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences Tufts University MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Jacob: Autistic-like behaviors and cognitive impairments associate with loss of the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) gene.  We deleted APC chiefly from excitatory neurons in the mouse developing forebrain; the mice exhibited changes in synapse maturation and density, reduced social interest, increased repetitive behaviors, and learning deficits.  In addition, we found  molecular changes that define a novel role for APC in linking to and regulating the levels of particular proteins that function in synaptic adhesion complexes and signaling pathways that are required for normal learning and memory consolidation. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, BMJ, Karolinski Institute / 19.06.2014

Dr. Henrik Larsson PhD Associate Professor Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Karolinska Institute Stockholm, SwedenMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Henrik Larsson PhD Associate Professor Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Karolinska Institute Stockholm, Sweden MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Larrson: We found no evidence for an overall increased rate of suicide related events associated with the use of stimulant or non-stimulant drug treatment for ADHD. If anything, the results pointed to a potential protective effect of drugs for ADHD on suicidal behaviour, particularly for stimulant drugs. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, OBGYNE, Smoking / 21.05.2014

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nathalie E. Holz, MA Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Holz: Using data from a prospective community sample followed since birth, we investigated the impact of prenatal maternal smoking on lifetime Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms and on brain structure and inhibitory control assessed with Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the adult offspring. Those who were prenatally exposed to tobacco not only exhibited more ADHD symptoms, but also showed decreased activity in the inhibitory control network encompassing the inferior frontal gyrus as well as the anterior cingulate cortex. Activity in these regions was inversely related to lifetime ADHD symptoms and novelty seeking, respectively. In addition volume in the inferior frontal gyrus was decreased in these participants. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, JAMA / 25.02.2014

Jørn Olsen, M.D., Ph.D. Professor Institute of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology UCLA Aarhus University Aarhus,DenmarkMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jørn Olsen, M.D., Ph.D.  Professor Institute of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology UCLA Aarhus University Aarhus,Denmark MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Olsen: Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is drug being used by many, including pregnant women. In our data about half of all pregnant women in 1995 to 2002 had used the drug all least once during their pregnancy. The drug has shown hormonal disruptor properties in animal studies. We found that women who used this drug during pregnancy gave birth to children who 5 – 10 years later slightly more often had behavioral problems or were treated for ADHD. The risk was highest for those who took the medication late in pregnancy and/or had taken the drug several times. The increased risk was about 10-30%. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Autism / 29.01.2014

Bennett L. Leventhal, MD Nathan S. Kline Institue for Psychiatric Research 140 Old Orangeburg Road, Building 35 Orangeburg, NY 10962MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Bennett L. Leventhal, MD Nathan S. Kline Institue for Psychiatric Research 140 Old Orangeburg Road, Building 35 Orangeburg, NY 10962 MedicalResearch.com:  What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Leventhal: In the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM5) released in May 2013, changes include major alterations in criteria for developmental disorders, in particular, the DSMIV diagnostic criteria for Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), including elimination of subtypes found in DSMIV such as Asperger Disorder and PDD NOS. Additionally, DSM 5 adds a new diagnostic category, Social Communication Disorder (SCD): individuals with SCD have difficulties similar to ASD but these problems are solely restricted to the realm of social communication and do not include the restrictive and repetitive behaviors found in ASD. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Radiology / 15.12.2013

Dr. Vitria Adisetiyo, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Fellow Medical University of South Carolina Center for Biomedical Imaging Charleston, SC 29425MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Vitria Adisetiyo, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Fellow Medical University of South Carolina Center for Biomedical Imaging Charleston, SC 29425 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Adisetiyo:  Using a non-invasive MRI method called magnetic field correlation imaging, we detected significantly reduced striatal and thalamic brain iron in medication-naive children and adolescents with ADHD compared to age-, gender- and IQ-matched typically developing controls. ADHD patients who had a history of psychostimulant medication treatment (e.g. Ritalin, Aderrall) had brain iron levels comparable to controls, suggesting brain iron may normalize with psychostimulants. Blood iron measures did not differ between patients and controls. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 15.12.2013

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Desiree Silva MB BS, FRACP, MPH Consultant Paediatrician Suite 210 Specialist Centre, Joondalup Health Campus 60 Shenton Avenue, Joondalup WA 6027MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Desiree Silva MB BS, FRACP, MPH Consultant Paediatrician Suite 210 Specialist Centre, Joondalup Health Campus 60 Shenton Avenue, Joondalup WA 6027 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Prof. Silva: Our study is one of the largest population based studies of 12,991 children with ADHD. We found that smoking in pregnancy, maternal urinary infections, preeclampsia, being induced and threatened pre-term labour increases the risk of ADHD with little gender differences.  Prematurity also increased the risk of ADHD including babies born late preterm and early term marginally increased the risk of ADHD. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 04.10.2013

Tanya Froehlich, MD, MS Associate Professor Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC 4002 Cincinnati, OH 45229MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tanya Froehlich, MD, MS Associate Professor Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC 4002 Cincinnati, OH  45229 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Froehlich: In a national sample of 2 to 5 year olds, the likelihood of psychotropic prescription peaked in the mid-2000s (at 1.5%), then stabilized in the late 2000s (to 1.0%). Increased psychotropic use in boys, white children, and those lacking private health insurance was documented. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 30.05.2013

Kathryn L. Humphreys, M.A., Ed.M. Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student UCLA Department of Psychology 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563 Los Angeles, CA 90095MedicalResearch.com eInterview with Kathryn L. Humphreys, M.A., Ed.M. Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student UCLA Department of Psychology 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563 Los Angeles, CA 90095 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Response: Our primary question was to answer whether the use of stimulant medication in the treatment of ADHD was associated with increased or decreased risk for a variety of substance use (ever tried) and substance use disorder (abuse or dependence) outcomes (alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, nicotine, and non-specific drug use). Prior research from individual studies of children have provided mixed evidence (i.e., some found medication increased later risk, some found medication decreased risk, and still others found no difference in risk). We examined available longitudinal studies (i.e., medication treatment preceded measurement of substance outcome) together using meta-analysis, a technique that aggregates findings from a number of studies, in order to examine this question in a much larger sample of individuals. Our main finding was that children with ADHD who received medication treatment did not differ in risk for lifetime substance use or abuse or dependence compared to those children with ADHD who did not receive medication treatment. (more…)