14 DAY TRIAL // Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center investigators have established in an new study that long-term exposure to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication is not harmful to monkeys.
The study was focused primarily on figuring out the effects that ADHD drugs have on the brain, since many anecdotal reports about negative side-effects began making the rounds long ago, PsychCentral reports. Up to 7 percent of elementary school students are diagnosed with this condition yearly.
“We didn’t know whether taking these drugs over a long period could harm brain development in some way or possibly lead to abuse of drugs later in adolescence,” say Michael A. Nader, PhD, and Linda Porrino, PhD, the two leaders of the new investigation.
The team measured the brain chemistry and structure of monkeys in the experiment both before and after long-term exposure (the equivalent of four years in human years) to ADHD drugs, and found no discernible difference.