Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2004 Feb;58(1):37-41. Related Articles, Links
Rapid improvement in academic grades following methylphenidate treatment in
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Yang P, Chung LC, Chen CS, Chen CC.
Department of Psychiatry, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital and
Department of Psychiatry, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taiwan.
In the present study a 16 week comparison study was conducted of behavioral,
cognitive and educational measures in school-age Taiwanese children with
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) receiving open-label
methylphenidate (MPH). Subjects include 14 male and five female ADHD
children. They received MPH twice per day continuously for 16 weeks.
Measures of behavior, cognitive function (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Tower
of London and Continuous Performance Test), Chinese and arithmetic learning
achievement were compared with those of their baseline condition. After MPH,
68-78% of children showed improving behavior in classroom and at home. Among
the neuropsychological tests, only the percentage of preservative error was
improved (P = 0.022). Approximately 61-66% of children had improvement in
academic learning (P = 0.013 for Chinese, 0.004 for arithmetic). The MPH
treatment demonstrated improvement in domains of classroom/home behaviors
and academic performance, but showed minimal change on neuropsychological
functioning in Taiwanese ADHD children. The finding of academic gain was
unexpected, which might be due to the greater interest in achievement and
better compliance to cultural expectations by Taiwanese versus Western
students, which translated into more rapid improvement in academic
performance.
PMID: 14678455 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]