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SATURDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- Parents of children who are prescribed psychostimulants for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might have one less thing to worry about now that a new study concludes these kids are no more likely than their peers to abuse drugs and alcohol as young adults.
The report, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
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"The results should reassure clinicians who might be hesitant to treat ADHD because of concerns about future substance abuse," said study co-author Michael C. Monuteaux, assistant director of research at the pediatric psychopharmacology program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Past research looking for a link between ADHD medications and substance abuse has produced conflicting conclusions.
"Some previous studies showed an increased risk of substance abuse associated with stimulant treatment, and other studies showed both no association and also a protective effect from treatments," Monuteaux said. "But those studies had some methodological limitations, and not all of them followed their samples well into late adolescence and early adulthood."
The Massachusetts General Hospital investigators designed their study to overcome the shortcomings of previous studies. They followed their research subjects up to a median age of about 22, included an assessment for psychiatric problems such as conduct disorder that are associated with substance abuse, and applied rigorous methods to accurately analyze data.
The research study team interviewed 112 young men (ranging in age from 16 to 27) a decade after they had been diagnosed with ADHD about their use of alcohol, tobacco and a variety of psychoactive drugs. Seventy-three percent of the subjects had been treated with stimulants at some time, and 22 percent were currently taking the stimulant medications.
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