Adult ADHD Tied to Common Forms of Dementia

According to the results of a new scientific investigation, it would appear that people who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as adults tend to be more at risk of developing two common forms of dementia as seniors.

The research found that individuals who displayed ADHD symptoms tended to go on and develop either Lewy bodies dementia (DLB) or Alzheimer's disease (AD). Details of the work were published in the January issue of the esteemed European Journal of Neurology.

During the experiments, some 360 patients diagnosed with degenerative forms of dementia and 149 healthy controls were surveyed, and asked to answer a questionnaire about their health.

The main conclusion of the study was that people who had ADHD as adults are up to three times more likely to develop AD or DLB than their peers who did not exhibit such symptoms.

Argentine researchers say that, of the 360 ill patients that were analyzed, 109 suffered from DLB, while 251 had AD. All test participants, regardless of health condition, were matched by age, gender and education, AlphaGalileo reports.

“Our study showed that 48 per cent of patients with DLB – the second most common cause of degenerative dementia in the elderly after Alzheimer’s – had previously suffered from adult ADHD,” explains Dr Angel Golimstok.

“This was more than three times the 15 per cent rate found in both the control group and the group with Alzheimer’s,” adds the expert, who was the lead author of the investigation.

“DLB is thought to account for around ten per cent of dementia cases in older people, but it tends to be under-diagnosed because it shares some characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's,” he goes on to say.

The expert adds that the dementia patients that were used in the investigation suffered only from mild to moderate-intensity symptoms, and that they ranked one to two on the clinical dementia rating scale.

People in the healthy control group had their health status analyzed thoroughly, to eliminate the possibility of them having suffered from ADHD-related symptoms in the past. If that were the case, then the study may have yielded misleading results.

“ADHD is one of the most common behavior disorders in child and adolescent psychiatry and the problems it causes, such as difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity and doing things impulsively, can continue into adulthood,” Golimstok reveals.

“We believe that our study is the first of its kind to examine the clinical association between adult ADHD symptoms and DLB and that it has established a clear link between the two conditions,” the doctor adds.

“Our theory is that this association can be explained by the common neurotransmitter dysfunction present in both conditions. There is clearly a common process involved in both illnesses and it appears that ADHD often develops into DLB as the patient ages,” he concludes.