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ADHD 'may be genetic condition'

Professor Yaffle

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Professor Yaffle
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Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is a genetic condition, research has suggested.
The behaviour of children with the disorder can be explained by differences in the brain rather than parenting skills or diet, according to the study by scientists at Cardiff University.
The team found rare copy number variants - where small segments of DNA are duplicated or missing - were twice as common in children with ADHD than those without the condition.
According to the research, published in the Lancet, there was overlap between the affected parts of the DNA and those associated with autism and schizophrenia.
The most significant overlap was found at a particular region on chromosome 16, which has previously been implicated in schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders and spans a number of genes including one known to play a role in the development of the brain, the team found.
Click to expand...
http://www.talktalk.co.uk/news/pa/uknews/2010/09/30/adhd-may-be-genetic-condition.html

The Lancet paper can be found here:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61109-9/fulltext
 
Interesting, there was a time when it wasn't thought to be a genetic condition? Didn't know that.
 
I have three children from two marriages. My sone from my first marriage has ADHD to the extent that he needs help to get through the day and to protect him from his self.

My daughter from my second marriage had ADHD so bad it has left her unemployable and with a criminal record.

So, yes, it looks like it's genetic and it also looks like I carry the defective gene. Otherwise I have drawn the short straw.
 
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I have two daughters from different fathers,

the daughter who had a father with ADHD also has ADHD, he also has three other children from a former marriage and all three of them have ADHD.

My other daughter whose father did not have it does not have it.

But I read somewhere a long time ago that if you have a child from a father over fourty years old then that child has a 400% higher likelihood of having ADHD.
MY first daughter's father was nineteen, that daughter does not have ADHD.
My second daughter's father was in his fourties, that daughter does have ADHD.
So are more kids being diagnosed with ADHD now because fathers (and their genetic material) are getting older ?
Aging doesn't explain his other kids having ADHD, he was in his twenties, but genetics would.
 
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The team found rare copy number variants - where small segments of DNA are duplicated or missing - were twice as common in children with ADHD than those without the condition.

So there's an awful lot of people with this genetic trait who do not have ADHD and people with ADHD without it.

Is it surprising news that genes influence an individual's susceptibility to various medical conditions?

What would be interesting to find out is what the triggers are for ADHD.
 
Listened to more about this research on the news in the car on the way back from work. According to that report the actual figures for this genetic variation are 15% of people diagnosed with ADHD have it compared to 7% of controls.

Yes, that's right folks, 85% of people diagnosed with ADHD in the study didn't have this genetic variation.

Shouldn't this sort of underwhelming research be published in more specific (and lower impact) journals than The Lancet?
 
When I read this headline, I thought it came from the academic department of DUH.
 
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