Sunday, August 12, 2007

New Study Finds That Ritalin Improves the Vigilance Performance of Children With ADHD and Who Have Poor Sleep Efficiency

A study published in the August 1 edition of the journal SLEEP has found another benefit for children who are taking Ritalin to manage their ADHD symptoms. It helps them sleep better. A lack of sleep hampers cognitive functions, reduces brain processing capacity, and increases injury risk by 86%.*

The study was conducted by Ridha Joober, MD, and Reut Gruber, PhD, of Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The team found that "children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and whose sleep efficiency is poor, experience significant improvement on some measures of the Continuous Performance Test (CPT) if they are treated with [Ritalin]."

For the study, children were given a placebo for one week, then researchers calculated the mean sleep efficiency score for each child. Those children with scores above the mean were placed in a "Good Sleep Group" while the other children were place in the "Poor Sleep Group." Then, at home, parents monitored the sleep of each child for two weeks using actigraphy*, completing nightly sleep logs and a filling out a sleep questionnaire. In the lab researchers administered The Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT) was used to assess vigilance.

"Children with low sleep efficiency might improve performance following the administration of MPH as it increases their arousal level to a moderate level, which is presumed to facilitate vigilance performance," wrote Joober and Gruber. "To our knowledge, this is the first study in which the MPH response in children with ADHD has compared poor and good sleepers using an objective neuropsychological test and a validated clinical scale as the outcome measures. Future studies looking at the association between the impact of MPH, basal characteristics of sleep and the efficiency of different attentional systems in children with ADHD are needed to further examine the association between sleep and neurobehavioral functioning in ADHD."

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* According to Researchers at the Children's Emergency Center of Udine, Italy, sleeping less than 10 hours a day results in an 86% increase in injury risk, among boys in particular.

* Actigraphy is a method of activity and sleep study achieved by mounting a small actigraph unit on a patient for an extended period. The unit itself typically includes a small accelerometer and continually records the movements it undergoes. When the data is later read to a computer it can be analyzed and used in the study of circadian rhythm and wake-sleep patterns.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/aa os-jsm_1072507.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-deficit_hyp eractivity_disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Performanc e_Task
http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/adhd.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actigraphy
http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?cita tionid=3301