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ADHD Has Been Proven to be a Genetic Disorder
ADHD: genetic disorder.
A study published today in medical journal The Lancet proves that ADHD is a genetic disorder.
Anita Thapar, professor at Cardiff University, says, “Too often, people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. As a clinician, it was clear to me that this was unlikely to be the case. Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease and that the brains of children with this condition develop differently to those of other children.”
Dr. Nigel Williams, also of Cardiff, says, “Children with ADHD have a significantly higher rate of missing or duplicated DNA segments compared to other children and we have seen a clear genetic link between these segments and other brain disorders.”
The research also shows that there is “some overlap between ADHD and autism in terms of symptoms and learning difficulties.” The most significant of which was found on chromosome 16 “which has been previously implicated in schizophrenia and other major psychiatric disorders.”
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[...] not to discount the study, because it’s a step towards uncovering the roots of a disorder that clearly has a biological basis. We already knew that ADHD was highly heritable [...]
ADHD is Genetic? Not So Fast. | Strollerderby commented on Oct 01 10 at 9:31 ambob commented on Sep 30 10 at 9:54 amThis is huge news. If it holds up, it could mean conclusive, objective, accurate tests for the disorder, and distinguishing medical cases from the parenting cases.
Emily commented on Sep 30 10 at 3:00 pmFinally! People can’t say that we’ve got bad parents any more!
Donna commented on Sep 30 10 at 7:27 pmThis is correlational research. Correlation does not mean causation. I suspect that the Lancet did not say “proven.” For example, there is a correlation between the amount of watermellons sold at grocery stores and the number of murders. Does that mean watermellons cause murder? No, because there is a third factor: summer heat. Be careful how you write things….
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