Long-term effects of stimulants on neurocognitive performance of Taiwanese children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Yu-Shu Huang¹  Fang-Ming Hwang²  Chen-Long Wu³  Shih-Ming Chu⁴  Ming-Horng Tsai⁴  Ching-Shu Tsai⁵  Kin-Bao Young⁶ 

[1] Department of Child Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and University, Linkou, Taiwan;Department of Education, National Chia-Yi University, Chiayi, Taiwan;Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Neonatology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan;Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and University, Chiayi, Taiwan;Infant and Child Care Department, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Science, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder;    Taiwan;    Intelligence;    WISC-III;    IQ;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-13-330

 received in 2012-11-24, accepted in 2013-11-26,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAttention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common behavioral and neurocognitive disorder in school-age children. Methylphenidate (MPH) is the most frequently prescribed CNS stimulant for ADHD. The aim of this study is to evaluate the changes in intelligence quotient and domains of neurocognitive function after long-term MPH treatment of Taiwanese children with ADHD.MethodsThe Wechsler Intelligence Scale (WISC-III) was administrated twice at an interval of at least one year for all 171 subjects (6–12 years) and 47 age- and gender-matched children without ADHD. The ADHD-Rating scale and Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) were also used at the time of enrolment, and at 6 months and one year later.ResultsTaiwanese children with ADHD had lower Verbal IQ (VIQ) and Full IQ (FIQ) and performed poorly on several subtests of the WISC-III, including Similarities, Vocabulary, and Coding, compared to healthy children without ADHD. After one year of MPH treatment, significant decrements in all scores of the ADHD-Rating scale and CGI-S and increments in several domains of the WISC-III, including FIQ, VIQ, PIQ, Perceptual Organization Index (POI), Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement, Object Assembly, and Digit Span were observed. When the ADHD children under MPH treatment were subdivided into two age groups (6–8 years and 9–12 years), significantly better performance in some subtests and subscales of the WISC-III (such as Similarities, Comprehension, and Object assembly) was found in the 6–8 years age group.ConclusionsLong-term MPH treatment may improve the neurocognitive profiles of the ADHD children, as seen in their performance in several subtests and in the IQ scores on the WISC-III. And this improvement had no correlation with the decrement of ADHD symptoms. Starting stimulant treatment at as young an age as possible is advised due to the greater benefits in the 6–8 years age group, as seen in this study. More research in this area is also needed to confirm these results.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Tsai et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.