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(Ivanhoe Newswire) Children whove been diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may not sleep as well as their peers.
When Taiwanese researchers compared 281 kids age 10 to 17 who had been diagnosed with ADHD at a mean age of about 7 with 185 healthy children, they found the ADHD kids were more likely to suffer from sleep problems, regardless of whether they were still suffering from ADHD or not.
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Girls in the study were more likely to be affected by nightmares, while boys had a greater incidence of snoring.
The investigators note ADHD and sleep problems often overlap in children, and clearing up problems with sleep could have a positive impact on ADHD as well. In some patients with ADHD, symptoms are caused or exaggerated by primary sleep disorders, and therefore treatment of the sleep disorder will improve ADHD symptoms, study author Susan Shur-Fen Gau, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at National Taiwan University, was quoted as saying.
She and her fellow researchers believe these findings suggest a need to screen kids with ADHD for sleep disorders and develop a modified treatment plan aimed at helping both conditions.
SOURCE: SLEEP, published online May 1, 2009
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