Young children continue to display severe symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder despite treatment, according to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
As the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses continues to increase, experts say that it is becoming even more important to understand the disorder and to develop treatments that last for a longer time.
"ADHD is becoming a more common diagnosis in early childhood, so understanding how the disorder progresses in this age group is critical," said Dr. Mark Riddle, lead investigator and pediatric psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
"We found that ADHD in preschoolers is a chronic and rather persistent condition, one that requires better long-term behavioral and pharmacological treatments than we currently have.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and its findings indicate that the majority of the young children who participated in the study did not respond well to ADHD treatment.
Nine of out 10 study participants who have been diagnosed with ADHD continued to experience symptoms of the disorder after undergoing treatment, according to the report.
The study's data indicated that 90 percent of the 186 preschoolers who participated in the study were reported by researchers to still be grappling with the disorder after a period of six years post-diagnosis.
And even the children in the study that were prescribed ADHD medication had comparably severe symptoms to those who were not medicated, according to the study.
The number of U.S. children who are treated for ADHD is higher than 7 percent, according to investigators.
Columbia University Medical Center, Duke University, the Nathan Kline Institute, University of California-Irvine and University of California-Los Angeles also participated in the study that was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
(SOURCE)
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