Word: adhd
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...shut down and production of the other proteins spins out of control. The brain develops too many connections, or synapses, many of them immature and flimsy. The resulting symptoms range from learning disorders to mental retardation and often include autism, epilepsy, anxiety disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). "Fragile X is a disorder of excess," explains neuroscientist Mark Bear of MIT. Autism in general seems to involve excessive connections in the brain. Bear and others suspect that drugs that could attack this problem in FXS patients could also prove useful in other types of autism...
...Wendy Weber, a naturopathic physician at Bastyr, the group decided to study St. John's wort after the Food and Drug Administration approved atomoxetine - an agent that keeps nerve endings in the brain flooded with the neurotransmitter norepinephrine - for treating ADHD in children. They knew from previous studies that at least one of St. John's wort's active ingredients, hyperforin, has the same effect on brain neurons, and speculated, as have other proponents of alternative therapies, that the botanical might help to relieve symptoms of ADHD without a prescription. But among the 54 children between six and 17 years...
...popular herbal remedy for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children actually does little to improve symptoms of the disease, according to a new study. Researchers at Bastyr University in Washington state report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that St. John's wort, a commonly used botanical to treat depression, does not help children with ADHD to concentrate or curb hyperactivity any more than a rice-protein placebo over an eight-week period. It's the first such study to tackle the question of St. John's wort's effectiveness against ADHD in a randomized...
Weber notes, however, that hyperforin tends to oxidize and therefore lose potency in pill form. More recent formulations, she says, may retain this potency slightly longer, and therefore may have greater effects on ADHD symptoms - but only an additional study can establish whether that's the case...
...first study of St. John's wort and ADHD in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, these findings are important not only for ADHD patients but for the even larger community that relies on naturopathic and alternative therapies to relieve everything from infections to depression. "One lesson from this paper is that it shows that a lot of alternative therapies can be studied in a rigorous way," says Dr. Eugenia Chan, director of the ADHD program at Children's Hospital in Boston...