Medication Breaks May Allow ADHD Kids to Catch Up to Tall Peers

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ADHD NEWS AND VIEWS

March 2, 2010

Medication Breaks May Allow ADHD Kids to Catch Up to Tall Peers

Worried that negative side effects of your child’s attention deficit

hyperactive disorder (ADHD) treatment may mean she’ll be shorter or smaller?

Stimulant medications commonly prescribed for patients with ADHD, such as

methylphenidate (which is sold by the brand name Ritalin) and amphetamine (which

is sold by the brand names Adderall and Dexedrine), have relatively minimal

effects on your child’s growth, according to a new article published in the

February 2010 issue of Canadian Family Physician Journal. And with monitoring

and/or treatment tweaks any loss of height can be reversed.

Although stimulants can carry potential risks for children using them,

“current knowledge suggests that the group of stimulant medications have

little effect on the rate of height loss, and this effect is likely reversible

with withdrawal of treatment,†said Ran D. Goldman, M.D., medical director of

the Emergency Medicine department in British Columbia Children’s hospital in

Vancouver, Canada, and the author of the article.

In the article he explains that there are three ways stimulant medications can

negatively affect how tall your child grows. First, some patients may experience

a loss of appetite, which often results in fewer calories consumed. A second

theory suggests that increasing dopamine (which is how stimulants work in the

treatment of ADHD patients) can cause the suppression of growth hormone

secretion and “directly affect height development in children.†Finally,

some studies cited in the Canadian Family Physician Journal article have

suggested that stimulants may also slow down the development of cartilage

tissue, affecting bone growth.

Recent studies have concluded that while there is some apparent effect on growth

-- i.e. ADHD children taking stimulants while still growing may experience less

growth than their peers -- if a child stops taking the stimulant that has

affected their height, they can “catch up†in the growth pace of their

peers. This is why some experts recommend patients take “summer breaks†from

treatment.

Dr. Goldman suggests that parents “should follow their child’s growth curves

and discuss with their health care provider potential ‘breaks’ in stimulant

therapy.â€

Research related to stunted growth as a side effect of ADHD stimulant

medications is limited and Dr. Goldman cautioned that follow-up studies on

children who have used stimulants for many years and into their adult lives are

“imperative.†“Only after receiving these scientific findings in different

groups of children, treated with all types of stimulants and for different

treatment length, will we be able to have confirmation to current understanding

of the limited height loss.â€