What have we learned about ADHD comorbidities?

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert

After 5.5 years, the CoCA project has come to an end. In this large-scale European research project, an interdisciplinary group of researchers investigated comorbid conditions of ADHD. They particularly focussed on depression, anxiety, substance use disorder and obesity, as these conditions frequently co-occur with ADHD in adulthood.

What has this extensive study brought us? Experts dr. Catharina Hartman (University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands) and prof. dr. Andreas Reif (University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany) were invited by Jonathan Marx for an interview on the online radio program Go To Health Media. In this program they talk about several aspects of the CoCA project: How often do comorbid conditions co-occur with ADHD? What do the genetics of ADHD comorbidities tell us? What should clinicians do to prevent or reduce these comorbidities in ADHD?

As professor Andreas Reif summarizes at the end of the interview, the main things that we learned from the CoCA project are:

  1. Comorbidity in ADHD is a very big problem. Adults with ADHD frequently have co-occuring conditions such as depression, anxiety, obesity and to a bit lesser extent substance use disorder.
  2. The type and prevalence of comorbidities differ between men and women.
  3. There is considerable genetic overlap between ADHD and comorbid conditions. We think that at least part of the overlap between comorbidities is caused by genetic effects (next to environmental effects that also play a role).
  4. The dopamine system plays an important role in comorbidity, through influencing brain processes.
  5. Disturbances in the circadian system (i.e. sleep cycle) are unlikely to play a causal role in these comorbidities, but they might be a consequence.
  6. Clinicans should look out for comorbidities when they treat ADHD patients, and inform their patients about their increased risk to develop comorbidities so that they can take preventive measures (i.e. be careful with alcohol to avoid substance use disorder). Secondly, clinicians should actively look out for ADHD symptoms when treating conditions such as depression, anxiety, substance use disorder or obesity.

Watch the full interview with both experts by clicking on the image below:

More information about the CoCA project: www.coca-project.eu

Just-in-time-adaptive-interventions

Posted on by elenakochkit

Aid for ADHD individuals personal needs, right when it is needed

You might know the tenet of “just in time” from economics. It means bringing goods to a recipient at the right time, exactly when it is needed. But what if we could apply this also to treatments or interventions for mental health problems? Can we provide small interventions at exactly the time when a person needs it? And can this provide us with more insights into what triggers ADHD symptoms?

Just in time economics is possible and required because of dynamic processes in economical markets. Dynamic processes are also present in mental disorders. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that is dynamic by nature. Core symptoms of ADHD are hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity, and many individuals also experience emotion dysregulation. In the past, research focused mainly on how patients with ADHD differ from healthy individuals or other disorders. But what about ADHD individuals’ context or other dynamics, that may trigger symptoms? For this we need to look much more closely at the dynamics of an individual’s life.

Ambulatory Assessment: collecting data in real time and in real life

The Ambulatory Assessment method makes use of smartphones, accelerometers, GPS-tracking and geolocation approaches to track how you feel, what you do, where you go, who you meet, what you eat, and how you’re body is doing (i.e. your heartrate) (1).  This method has improved a lot over years and technical progress makes it more and more feasible to investigate associations between variables over time and how these variables interact in everyday life. This provides researchers with new insights into many different factors that can influence a person’s symptoms and mental health.

The importance of context

The Ambulatory Assessment method also enables to better differentiate between real and deceptive associations. Imagine, a person is asked for hyperactivity in the morning at 9:00 am, noon and evening and it turns out that the person is very hyperactive in the morning. Your conclusion may be that this individual is more hyperactive in the morning, but you don’t know why. If you know more about this person’s context, it may turn out that every day at 08:30 am the person drinks two cups of coffee which causes the measured hyperactivity at 9:00 am. This gives you much more insight into what triggers his or her symptoms.

Another example: imagine that a symptom always occurs in a special situation, at a special place or with a special person (e.g., after trying to catch the connecting train every morning at the same time). If you always ask for symptoms at the same time of day, you may miss this special occasion because it always occurs at another time. This way, you may miss out on important associations between symptoms and situations, places or persons. It is therefore very important to measure symptoms at random time points, or when they are triggered by certain events. This gives you much more informative data.

Cause or consequence?

However, the Ambulatory Assessment method is not yet perfect. The main limitation is that it’s difficult to determine what causes what (2). For example, do fluctuations in mood in patients with ADHD lead to impulsivity or hyperactivity? Or does mood change as a consequence of impulsivity? Another example: Do I feel better after exercising or do I move more because I feel good? Researchers recently found evidence for both directions (3,4).

Towards developing just in time treatment

Let’s think about the next step. A better understanding of causes and consequences and associations between symptoms and environmental triggers in an individual’s real world, creates the basis for just-in-time interventions (6). The idea is to react on dynamics in how symptoms are experienced or triggered, by timing the interventions exactly when it is needed. This could be realized by smartphones or wearables, which are already implemented in Ambulatory Assessment research. These devices are then not only used to collect data in real-time, but also to give feedback and provide interventions to reduce or prevent symptoms.

Exercise intervention through a smartphone app

The antecedent of just-in-time-adaptive-interventions are ecological momentary interventions (EMIs). One example of such an EMI or electronic diary intervention with a smartphone and an accelerometer for individuals with ADHD is the PROUD trial of the European funded project CoCA (5). In this trial, individuals with ADHD received a smartphone and a kind of sports watch (that measures your movement) that together measured their behavior, activity, daylight exposure, mood and symptoms during the day. The smartphone also provided an intervention, either in the form of sports exercises or in the form of bright light therapy. During the exercise intervention, participants are given instructions to perform exercises via a smartphone app by which they are guided through their training by weekly goals, motivational reminders, and training videos. Every evening, they get feedback on performed intervention parameters from that day in real time. This system was not yet so developed that it also changed the type or timing of the intervention to the data that was collected during the day, but that would be the next step to create a just-in-time intervention.

In conclusion, it is important to investigate the associations between ADHD individuals’ symptoms and their personal everyday lives. This helps researchers to understand the dynamic processes behind ADHD and to create tailor-made interventions that can easily be integrated in the everyday life of these individuals. A physician cannot support a patient throughout every step he/she takes, but there are already devices that can be supportive around the clock and technical innovations will surely pave the way to improve personal just-in-time interventions in the near future. 

This blog was written by Elena Koch. She is a PhD student at Karlsruhe Institute for Technology in Germany.

  References

1.        Reichert M, Giurgiu M, Koch ED, Wieland LM, Lautenbach S, Neubauer AB, Haaren-Mack B v., Schilling R, Timm I, Notthoff N, Marzi I, Hill H, Brüßler S, Eckert T, Fiedler J, Burchartz A, Anedda B, Wunsch K, Gerber M, Jekauc D, Woll A, Dunton GF, Kanning M, Nigg CR, Ebner-Priemer U, Liao Y. Ambulatory assessment for physical activity research: State of the science, best practices and future directions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2020;50101742. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2020.101742

2.        Reichert M, Schlegel S, Jagau F, Timm I, Wieland L, Ebner-Priemer UW, Hartmann A, Zeeck A. Mood and Dysfunctional Cognitions Constitute Within-Subject Antecedents and Consequences of Exercise in Eating Disorders. Psychother Psychosom. 2020;89(2):119–21. doi:10.1159/000504061

3.        Koch ED, Tost H, Braun U, Gan G, Giurgiu M, Reinhard I, Zipf A, Meyer-Lindenberg A, Ebner-Priemer UW, Reichert M. Relationships between incidental physical activity, exercise, and sports with subsequent mood in adolescents. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2020;30(11):2234–50.

4.        Koch ED, Tost H, Braun U, Gan G, Giurgiu M, Reinhard I, Zipf A, Meyer-Lindenberg A, Ebner-Priemer UW, Reichert M. Mood Dimensions Show Distinct Within-Subject Associations With Non-exercise Activity in Adolescents: An Ambulatory Assessment Study. Front Psychol. 2018;9268. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00268

5.        Mayer JS, Hees K, Medda J, Grimm O, Asherson P, Bellina M, Colla M, Ibáñez P, Koch E, Martinez-Nicolas A, Muntaner-Mas A, Rommel A, Rommelse N, Ruiter S de, Ebner-Priemer UW, Kieser M, Ortega FB, Thome J, Buitelaar JK, Kuntsi J, Ramos-Quiroga JA, Reif A, Freitag CM. Bright light therapy versus physical exercise to prevent co-morbid depression and obesity in adolescents and young adults with attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Trials. 2018;19(1):140. doi:10.1186/s13063-017-2426-1

6. Koch, ED, Moukhtarian, TR, Skirrow, C, Bozhilova, N, Ashersn, P, Ebner-Priemer, UW. Using e-diaries to investigate ADHD – State-of-the-art and the promising feature of just-in-time-adaptive interventions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.06.002

Webinar: Does physical activity improve ADHD symptoms?

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that physical activity reduces ADHD symptoms. Some athletes, like Michael Phelps and Louis Smith, have said that their intenstive training helped them loose excessive energy and gain structure in their lives. But what is the scientific evidence for this?

Researcher dr. Jonna Kuntsi and her team from King’s College London have done a lot of reserach on this topic. They have reviewed the available literature on physical activitiy and ADHD, conducted analyses on twin-data and are conducting several experiments to test this. In this webinar she explains what’s known and what’s not yet known about whether physcial activity can improve ADHD symptoms

We previously wrote blogs about this topic as well:

Beneficial effects of high-intensity exercise on the attentive brain

Living day-to-day with ADHD and experience of the CoCA clinical trial

CoCA-PROUD trial ready to roll

How psychiatric genetics can help to guide diagnostic practice and therapy

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert

Recently, professor Stephen Faraone from SUNY Upstate University in the USA gave a webinar about genetic research in psychiatry (especially ADHD) and how this can help to better understand diagnosis and provide better treatment. In this blog I will share with you some highlights from this webinar.

  1. ADHD is a continuous trait in the population

ADHD is not something that you either have or don’t have. Rather, symptoms or characteristics of ADHD are present in the entire population, in varying severity. The system for psychiatric diagnoses is however based on categorical definitions that determine when a certain combination of symptoms and severity can be classified as a particular disorder. Although these categories can be of great help to provide public health data or determine insurance coverage, they often don’t really match individual cases. Hence there arise problems with heterogeneity, subtypes, subthreshold cases and comorbidity.

Genetic research has shown that psychiatric conditions such as ADHD are not caused by a few single genes, but rather by thousands or tens of thousands genetic variants that each contribute slightly to the ADHD risk. These so-called polygenic risk scores form a normal distribution across the entire population, with the majority of people having low polygenic risk scores (so a low to average risk of ADHD), while a small portion of individuals have a very low or very high risk. This adds to our understanding that ADHD is a continuous trait in the population.

Image from the webinar by prof. Stephen Faraone. The higher the number on the x-axis, the higher the genetic risk of having ADHD. Negative numbers mean reduced genetic risk of ADHD.

2. Comorbidity in psychiatry is the norm, rather than the exception

In the webinar, Stephen Faraone explains that in 90’s it was thought impossible that an individual can have both ADHD and depression. Now, we know better than that. There are substantial genetic correlations between different psychiatric disorders, meaning that the genes that increase the risk of for instance ADHD, also increase the risk of schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, autism and tic disorder. This is further evidence that psychiatric conditions are not separate, categorial entities but rather arise from similar biological mechanisms.

3. Personalised medicine and pharmacogenetics are not yet sufficiently established to adopt widely and replace current medication on a broad scale

The second part of the webinar was about pharmacogenetic testing. This means that an individual’s genetic profile is used to determine whether a drug will be effective, and in what dose. Although this sounds promising, there is still a lot of discussion about the validity of such tests. This is due to varying results, differing protocols and large heterogeneity between studies. In some cases, pharmacogenetic testing can help to find the right treatment for an individual, for instance when this person is not responding well to regular treatment, but it is definitely not a fool-proof method yet. Better randomized controlled clinical trials are needed to improve reliability of these tests.

You can watch the full webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLgqdJWZKIo

Why following instructions is essential for treatment success (and why this is really difficult)

Posted on by clarahausmannkit

 

Clara Hausmann, Mental mHealth Lab / Chair of Applied Psychology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology



When visiting your doctor due to a simple cold you’ve caught, you will probably get the following advice: Get a rest from work, stay in bed for a week, drink a lot of herbal tea and go for a slow walk once a day. Well, you might follow the advice as you’ve been told. But possibly, you can’t stand tea or you are currently under pressure to finish some urgent work and anyway, you don’t feel that bad anymore after one day in bed. The degree to which a patient correctly follows medical advice is called compliance.

            Compliance is also an important term in the psychological and medical research, we are conducting – especially in our ambulatory settings where patients are treated outside of the hospital. In contrast to doing research in very well controlled laboratory settings, embedding research into everyday life  avoids  a lot of methodological disadvantages. For example, participants’ behavior won’t be biased by the presence of a researcher or the artificial situation in the lab. Another great feature of ambulatory assessment lays within the opportunity to gather real time or near real time data. Participants will be regularly asked about their current state of mind, so researchers don’t have to take into account the inaccuracy of patients’ retrospective reports [1] .  Still, we are facing some difficulties when using ambulatory settings – reaching a good compliance is part of it.

            In the CoCA PROUD study, for instance, we are ambulatorily monitoring our ADHD-diagnosed participants’ mental and physical state. Therefore, they are equipped with a smartphone and a small activity sensor. Participants keep an eDiary, by fulfilling repeated questionnaires on the smartphone while the activity sensor on their wrists measures physical activity. Meanwhile, they will take part in some non-pharmalogical interventions (daily physical exercise training or bright light therapy), which promise to alleviate some core symptoms of ADHD and it’s comorbidities such as depression.

            In this study, „compliance“ is what we call the percentage of prompts, that were answered, in order to fulfill the eDiary. All in all, participants receive four prompts per day, including questions about their current mood, social context and ADHD symptomatology. Furthermore, we can analyze how often the sensor was worn. Additionally, checking for the compliance during the interventions allows us to calculate how much time was spend on actively carrying out the instructions (e.g. doing strengthening and aerobic exercises).

In general, we aim to reach a good compliance. The more our participants contribute, the better the quality of data and the understanding of ADHD can be. However, one can imagine that general facts of life such as situational distraction or simple forgetting can be a hindrance for participants, to answer prompts [2].  Apart from this, researchers must be aware, that ambulatory assessment is inherently disruptive to participants’ daily lives. For instance, the activity trackers that participants wear are quite big, and getting daily prompts from the eDiary can be a real nuisance. The art lies in the design of the research: It is unquestionably essential to find a good balance between participants’ expenditure in time and energy and the amount and quality of data collected [3]. In order to find this balance, we’re always first testing the research study on ourselves to check for the feasibility, comfort, and ease of participation.

            Besides that, there are specific challenges for participants diagnosed with ADHD. For instance, the tendency to show irregularities in the day-and-night-rhythm might not always match the time of the smartphone prompts, that are sent in regular intervals. Furthermore, some patients tend to have problems in keeping their belongings organized. Especially for young patients, it might be challenging to keep the phone both charged and on their person. Inattention and lack of concentration as core symptoms of ADHD, are additional burdens to the conscientious and constant work on the questionnaires. Particularly young patients are expected to be quickly bored by the repeated questions, incoming day by day.

            We encounter those difficulties in multiple ways. An important tool is the smartphone’s chat function. Participants can easily reach a contact person and vice versa. Hence, individual or technical problems can be detected and solved quickly. In order to facilitate the start, we send reminding and motivating messages during the first four days of the measurement. To keep participants’ motivation high, they receive daily feedbacks, visualizing how they have performed when exercising.

            Taken as a whole, compliance, whether good or not, provides a lot of important information about the quality of the intervention. A treatment can only be considered as promising and helpful, when patients are able and motivated to include it into their daily lives. Therefore, the combination of ambulatory assessment and compliance monitoring gives us a realistic idea of a treatment’s actual feasibility and – in the consequence – it’s quality.

 

References:

[1] Trull, T. J., & Ebner-Priemer, U. W. (2013). Ambulatory Assessment. Annual review of clinical psychology, 9, 151–176. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185510 

[2] Piasecki et al. (2007). Assessing Clients in Their Natural Environments With Electronic Diaries: Rationale, Benefits, Limitations, and Barriers. Psychological Assessment,19(1), 25-43. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.19.1.25


[3] Carpenter, R. W., Wycoff, A. M., & Trull, T. J. (2016). Ambulatory assessment: New adventures in characterizing dynamic processes. Assessment, 23(4), 414–424. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191116632341

 

Is it safe to use ADHD medications during pregnancy?

Posted on by Lin Li

“Should I discontinue stimulants when I am pregnant?” “Is it harmful to my developing baby if I take ADHD medications during my pregnancy?” “What are the risks both to me and my baby if my ADHD goes untreated?” “What is the best way to manage my ADHD during pregnancy?” – For women with ADHD who become pregnant, especially those with moderate or severe ADHD symptoms, the next few months are filled with questions. One important decision for the pregnant women and their clinician is whether to remain on or cease their ADHD medication treatment before or during pregnancy, or while breastfeeding. Unfortunately, there is no clear ADHD treatment guidelines for pregnant women, which further complicates these decisions. Therefore, there is a need for high-quality evidence to support guidelines for the use of ADHD medication during pregnancy.

Given that, it is unethical to include pregnant and breastfeeding women in clinical trials, evidence-based guidelines need to rely on findings from naturalistic studies. So, what does the available findings from naturalistic studies tell us?  

In our newly published paper in CNS Drugs (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-020-00728-2), we conducted a systematic review to synthesize all available evidence regarding the safety of ADHD medication use while pregnant, with a focus on how these studies have handled the influence of confounding, which may bias the estimates from observational studies.

We identified eight cohort studies that estimated adverse pregnancy-related and offspring outcomes associated with exposure to ADHD medication during pregnancy. These studies varied a lot in data sources, type of medications examined, definitions of studied pregnancy-related and offspring outcomes etc. Overall, there was no convincing evidence for an association between maternal ADHD medication use during pregnancy and adverse pregnancy and offspring outcomes. Some studies suggested a small increased risk of low Apgar scores, preeclampsia, preterm birth, miscarriage, cardiac malformations, admission to a NICU, and central nervous system (CNS)-related disorder, but other available studies failed to detect similar associations. Because of the limited number of studies and inadequate confounding adjustment, it is currently unclear whether these small associations are due to a causal effect of prenatal exposure to ADHD medication or confounding.

In conclusion, the current evidence does not suggest that the use of ADHD medication during pregnancy results in significant adverse consequences for mother or offspring. However, the data are too limited to make an unequivocal recommendation. Therefore, physicians should consider whether the advantages of using ADHD medication outweigh the potential risks for the developing fetus according to each woman’s specific circumstances.

More information here:

Li, L., Sujan, A.C., Butwicka, A. et al. Associations of Prescribed ADHD Medication in Pregnancy with Pregnancy-Related and Offspring Outcomes: A Systematic Review. CNS Drugs (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-020-00728-2

Authors:

Lin Li, MSc, PhD student in the School of Medical Science, Örebro University, Sweden.

Henrik Larsson, PhD, professor in the School of Medical Science, Örebro University and Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Prevalence and cost of ADHD comorbidity

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert

Do individuals with ADHD more often suffer from depression, anxiety, substance abuse or severe obesity, than individuals without ADHD? Are there differences between men and women in how often this is the case? Does having ADHD in addition to one of these conditions result in higher health care costs?

The short answers to these questions, are yes, yes and yes. In the CoCA-project, researchers have investigated these questions using very large datasets including Scandinavian birth registries that contain information of millions of people. This allows us to get a better understanding of how often conditions occor, how often they occur together, and how often they occur in men vs women. Furthermore, we have investigated health insurance data from Germany to study patterns of health care costs associated with ADHD and its comorbid conditions.

The interpretation of these data is however not simple. That is why we have recorded a webinar with dr. Catharina Hartman from Groningen, The Netherlands. She is the leader of these studies and can explain what these findings can and cannot tell us. The webinar ends with implications for policy makers and health care professionals, based on these findings.

From genes to driving schools: an Estonian program to reduce traffic accidents

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert
Image by Netto Figueiredo from Pixabay

Driving is dangerous. 1.35 million people die from road accidents every year, according to the World Health Organization [1]. Young people who just obtained their driving license, and especially young men,  are at the highest risk for accidents. They are often seeking sensation, are more likely to take risks, and are more prone to take impulsive or thoughtless decisions while driving. To target this specific group, Estonian researchers have developed a training program for driving schools to make people aware of their impulsive tendencies.

Genetic predictors of traffic accidents

Interestingly, this Estonian research group that is led by professor Jaanus Harro specializes in genetics. Next to studying rats, Harro wanted to also investigate impulsive and aggressive behavior in humans. To measure this objectively outside of a laboratory setting they used data on traffic offences and accidents. Harro and his group found that a particular variation in the gene called 5-HTTLPR was associated with the number of speeding offences and traffic accidents [2]. People who have the short version of this variant are less likely to be caught for speeding or be involved in accidents, compared to those with the long variant.

The gene 5-HTTLPR is an important player in the serotonin system in the brain. Serotonin is a messenger molecule with many functions, one of them being the regulation of mood, impulsivity and aggression. Some people are more prone to act without thinking, or without considering the consequences, and this can partly be explained by genetics.

Reducing impulsive driving behavior

So should only people with the short version of 5-HTTLPR be allowed to drive? No, Harro and his team came up with something better: a program to reduce impulsive behavior on the road. They gave this to students who were learning to drive. In the training, students discussed their own impulsive tendencies, and ways to overcome these tendencies. There was also a control group that did not receive this extra lesson. Four years after obtaining their licenses, the group that received the training had been less involved in traffic violations and accidents than the control group. What’s more, those individuals with the long variant of 5-HTTLPR – so the ones who are more likely to be impulsive, based on this gene – benefited from the training the most.

For the driving schools the main implication of this experiment is that it is very beneficial to incorporate awareness training about impulsivity into driving lessons. Already eight driving schools in Estonia are providing the program to their students. The genetic findings however are mainly of interest to the researchers, who are hoping to gain a better understanding of impulsive and aggressive behavior. In addition to the serotonin-gene, they have found that genetic variations in the noradrenaline and dopamine system are also linked to traffic offenses and speeding, and to the effectiveness of the training [3, 4]. And just recently, they found that the neuropeptide orexin is linked to both aggression and to the prevalence of drunk driving and traffic accidents [5].

Beyond genetics

In addition to genes, other factors such as age, intelligence, and stressful life events influence the risk of offences and accidents as well, but we still know very little about how this works. That is why Harro and his team are now investigating the interactions between genes and environment. This research is part of the horizon2020 projects CoCA and Eat2beNICE. Ultimately, through a better understanding of our biology they hope to improve the way that people behave on the road, thereby reducing the number of accidents.

Meanwhile, Jaanus Harro travels to ministries and other governmental organizations in Estonia and Finland, to convince them to implement the training program on a national level, and to provide funds for further research. And in case you wonder about Harro’s own driving habits: although he acknowledges that he is quite impulsive, he assures us that he has learned to keep this under control while driving.

Jaanus Harro was recently interviewed by Science Business about this topic. Parts of this blogpost ar based on this interview. You can read the article here: https://sciencebusiness.net/keeping-drivers-impulses-check

References

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries (accessed 3 January 2020).

[2] Eensoo, Paaver, Vaht, Loit & Harro (2018). Risky driving and the persistent effect of a randomized intervention focusing on impulsivity: The role of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 113, 19-24. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29407665

[3] Paaver, Eenso, Kaasik, Vaht, Mäestu & Harro (2013). Preventing risky driving: A novel and efficient brief intervention focusing on acknowledgement of personal risk factors. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 50, 430-437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22694918

[4] Luht, Tokko, Eensoo, Vaht & Harro (2019). Efficacy of intervention at traffic schools reducing impulsive action, and association with candidate gene variants. Acta Neuropsychiatrica, 31, 159 – 166. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31182183

[5] Harro, Laas, Eensoo, Kurrikoff, Sakala, Vaht, Parik, Maëstu & Veidebaum (2019). Orexin/hypocretin receptor gene (HCRTR1) variation is associated with aggressive behaviour. Neuropharmacology, 156. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30742846

 

Mythbusters: artificial food colours and ADHD

Posted on by Jeanette Mostert

When I was a kid, there was a boy in my class called Jeroen. At times I found him friendly and funny, but other times he would drive me insane with his hyperactive behaviour, jumping around and pulling my hair. Then one day, he told us that we wasn’t aloud to eat anything with artificial food colours anymore. This was supposed to reduce his hyperactivity. I was hopeful, but also sceptical if this would work.

Now that I’m involved in an international consortium investigating food and behaviour, I finally had the chance to learn about food colours and ADHD. Turns out, there is some truth to the claim, although it may only be true for some children, and it may not be specific to ADHD.

A shitty story

To better understand the effects of food on behaviour, we need to start at the end. Your poo can actually tell us a lot about the billions of microbes that live in your gut and help to digest the food you eat. For a long time, we didn’t know much about this micro-wildlife, until scientists developed techniques to analyse large amounts of DNA very quickly and cheaply. As every species has unique DNA, researchers can identify all the different species that live in your gut by analysing their DNA from poo. This helps us to better understand the many important roles that the gut bacteria play in your body, including your brain. For instance, certain bacteria produce neurotransmitters from digesting fibres. These neurotransmitters are important for the communication between brain cells.

ADHD

What does this have to do with ADHD? ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, which means that the brain develops differently compared to typically developing children. This influences the functioning of the brain and hence people with ADHD have problems focussing their attention, controlling their impulses and regulating their activity. A disruption in the neurotransmitter system is thought to play a key role in this. While the main cause of ADHD is genetic, environmental factors are also known to increase the risk of the condition, such as smoking during pregnancy, toxins in the environment, and food allergies. Since recently, researchers are investigating the gut bacteria (aka the poo) to better understand how food allergies may trigger ADHD [1].

Food allergies

The microbes in the gut interact closely with the immune system. During development the immune system has to learn that many foreign substances in the intestines (i.e. food and bacteria) are good and should not be attacked. In a way, it has to learn not to overreact. And this is what happens with food allergies. The over-reaction of the immune system is harmful for both the gut environment and for the brain, especially if it happens very often. Hence, an allergic reaction to food colourings may trigger small changes in the brain that in turn may trigger behaviour such as hyperactivity. How this works exactly is still unknown.

Based on this theory, clinicians and nutritionists are now investigating if special diets can reduce ADHD symptoms [2]. In such a diet, a child is put on a very restrictive diet that eliminates any potentially allergenic substances. To see which food types trigger the symptoms, specific foods are introduced one by one. For some children, this really seems to work well and they can manage their symptoms by not eating certain foods the rest of their lives. The elegance of this method is that it is based on the individual. While one person may need to eliminate food colourings, for another it could be certain fruits, or cow’s milk.

Myth busted?

Do artificial food colours cause ADHD? This may be the case for some children. In others, other types of food may trigger ADHD symptoms. And in yet another group of children, their ADHD has nothing to do with food allergies. At the moment, the only way to find out is through trial and error. But only try this under supervision of trained nutritionists and clinicians!

Back to Jeroen. I don’t remember him getting less annoying. Perhaps he was not allergic to food colourings at all, and he should have tried the complete elimination diet or different medication. Or perhaps I was just an eight-year old girl allergic to all boys.

References

  1. Dam, S. et al. (2019) The Role of the Gut-Brain Axis in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Gastroenterol Clin N Am, 48, 407–431
  2. Ly, V. et al. (2017) Elimination diets’ efficacy and mechanisms in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 26, 1067-1079.

This blog was written by dr. Jeanette Mostert. She is a neuroscientist and science communicator. She is involved in the CoCA-project and Eat2beNICE project. In the latter she is learning all about the links between food and mental health. 

Light therapy and its influence on ADHD: An interview

Posted on by lisahpbos

 

Nina (27 years, Dutch) participated in the PROUD-study and followed our light therapy. In this interview she describes the influences light therapy had on her ADHD symptoms.

What is it like to live with ADHD?

Please describe your main symptoms.

The symptom I experience as the most troublesome is making new friends. It is harder for me to make new friends, knowing I have fewer emotional and cognitive skills than peers. I am more sensitive to persons and situations and I experience them as more severe.

Besides, it is harder for me to see things in perspective and my perspectives change a lot over short periods of time. This makes it harder to look further in the future when making decisions. I also have less patience and it is harder for me to concentrate on a task. 

How does ADHD influence your life?

As I explained in the question before it can be tough to make friends. Concerning work, my ADHD has positive and negative effects. The negative effects are my lack of concentration, sometimes a job has to be done at a certain moment when I have no concentration, which can be a real struggle. The positive side is that I am creative and my spatial development is good. These are qualities that come handy at my job. Also my intelligence helps me. Because I am smart I can work fast at the moments my concentration is good, in order to compensate for the moments where my concentration is lost.

Do you think ADHD has any positive influences in your life?

It sure has, but these influences often last for a short period of time. I can be really enthusiastic and I am good at identifying people. This quality makes me a really good friend. Also my creativity is a positive effect of ADHD.

How have you been treated (medication/ psychotherapy)? What are the effects?

For a year and a half I have lived internally in a group especially for adolescents with ADHD and/or autism. Here I followed a training to improve my social abilities, how to engage in relationships with others and to be more independent.

From my 16th I take medication. I have switched a lot and tried different kinds of medication. Much of them did not work well for me, I even tried anti-depressants which made me feel sad. I am currently taking Stratera (short acting) and this works well for me. I don’t take it regularly but only at moments where I think I need it.

Study and intervention

How did you learn about the study?

I am regularly searching the internet to learn more about ADHD. This time I was searching information about comorbidity and neurodiversity and this is how I found your website, by chance.

What motivated you to participate?

It is a good thing that more research is done and I find it important to contribute. The more research is being conducted, the better others with ADHD can be helped. It is of great importance of me to be able to be a part in this. As long as we do not contribute to this kind of research, nothing will chance.

What were your expectations about the study before you started?

To be honest I did not have any expectations because I did not want to be affected by them.

What intervention did you participate in? When?

I participated in the bright light therapy from the 18th of October (2018) until the 10th of January (2019).

What did you like about the intervention? What did you dislike about the intervention?

At the beginning it was kind of hard, I found it really hard to be sitting still half an hour in the morning. Normally I rush through the mornings and do not really sit still at all. My solution was to put the lamp at my nightstand and sit in bed for half an hour in the morning, waking up next to the lamp. You can adjust the brightness of the lamp so I started with dimmed light and increased brightness step by step. Important is to sit upright because otherwise there is a chance of falling back to sleep!

In the beginning I had not realized what an impact this therapy has on your daily life, you really need the motivation to sit through, every day. After some time I got adapted to a new rhythm which made it easier to follow the light therapy for 6 times week. Only on Saturdays I skipped the sessions because of the weekend.

Was the intervention helpful?

It definitely has positive influences. The biggest change I have experienced is the adaptation to a more natural day/night rhythm. I was hoping a side effect would be falling asleep faster but unfortunately this was not the case for me.

The first days I experienced some negative side effects, which are explained in the bright light manual. Maybe it would be better if I had not read the manual because I was so focused on the experience of these side effects. What I felt was a really grumpy mood in the mornings. Luckily it only lasted for a few days.

Are you planning on continuing the intervention?

No, I have no plans of buying a lamp myself. Looking back at the intervention I think I would benefit more by participating in the aerobic exercise intervention, because sitting still for half an hour without a clear purpose is tough. Of course I did adapt to a better and more natural day/night rhythm because of the bright light therapy, but I think this could also be accomplished by going to bed at the same time every day.

Was it difficult/easy to use the App?

Definitely not difficult. The researches informed me about the sensor and how it might be inconvenient in the beginning but I only had to get used to it during the nights. The app was really clear and straight-forward, easy to use. I did forget the phone a few times, making me drive back home, but if you wear pants with pockets this should not be a problem.

Would you recommend other people with ADHD to participate in the study? Why?

I would definitely recommend it to people who are interested in this study and are motivated to participate. You really have to do it because you want it, not only because you want to help others.

Any suggestions/ways that the researchers could improve the experience for people in this study?

In my experience the study is set up well. Sometimes something went wrong (system was not installed right so they had to send me a new set, this set came without a wristband, red.) but the researchers handled it well and professionally. The researchers were cooperative and I liked participating in this study.

Lisa Bos, MSC works at Karakter Child and Youth Psychiatry and Radboud UMC (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) where she works as a researcher for the TRACE project and the PROUD-study. Both studies focus on additional treatments for ADHD and a healthy lifestyle which are also her main interests. She finds importance in studying socially relevant topics and improving the quality of care for ADHD patients.