The research complaints emphasize the longer duration of the ADHD medication for Finnish children

A current study by the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki in Finland and the Finnish social security institution Kela shows that the average duration of the ADHD medication for children and adolescents is more than three years. Reliable, controlled data on the safety of marketed ADHD medication in children are available for only one year after-examination.

The use of ADHD medication has increased in particular in recent years, but its long-term effects in children have not been adequately examined despite years of use. A recently populated register study showed that the average duration of ADHD medication for Finnish children and adolescents was over three years. In the quarter of the children with the longest duration of the ADHD medication treatment, treatment took more than seven years.

This is an important research opening, since the duration of the long-term use of ADHD medication in children and adolescents in everyday life was only examined to a very limited extent. “

Päivi Ruokoniemi, head of study, specialist for clinical pharmacology and therapeutics and child psychiatry, University of Helsinki

Boys were treated more frequently and for longer periods

The study showed that both the gender and the age in which ADHD medication started have a significant impact on the duration of treatment. On average, ADHD treatment for boys took just more than a year longer than for girls. For both genders, early starting age led to longer medication treatment.

The longest duration of ADHD medication was for boys who started medication aged 6 to 8 years. The median duration of her medication treatment was 6.3 years, and for a quarter the treatment took more than 9.4 years. This group was also the largest group that started ADHD medication. Boys between the ages of 6 and 8 made up for 32.4 percent of the study persons.

“Our investigations show that a significant part of the small children, especially the young, in their comprehensive school years, have ADHD medication for years. In this context, it is concerned that reliable research data on the safety of these medicinal products are only available for a year for up to one year. After all, we talk about children in a very sensitive phase of development,” says Ruokoniemi.

Studies on long -term effects that lack

The most reliable evidence of the safety of medicinal products comes from clinical, controlled and randomized studies. For the regulatory admission of ADHD medication, the European medication authority requires that pharmaceutical companies set up clinical security with a study with at least one year of the follow-up examination.

“The long-term effects of ADHD drugs have been examined in detail in various observation and uncontrolled research environments. However, these are always susceptible to confusing and therefore do not provide reliable information on cause-effect relationships,” continues Ruokoniemi.

“Because of these uncertainties, it is important that ADHD drugs are only started when non-pharmacological treatments are classified as inadequate. In this case, too, it must be ensured that both the caregiver as well as the child in accordance with the age and extent of the child and the development of the child and the development of the child and the damage associated with them and the damage associated with them and the damage associated with them and the damage associated with them have connected damage. “

The researchers also recommend that the ADHD medication that has already started should be checked by a doctor annually.

The descriptive register study, which was recently published in the journal European child and adolescent psychiatrywas carried out as a research collaboration between the universities of Turku and Helsinki and the Finnish social insurance Kela. The data used in the study come from the dispensation register for the years 2008-2019 reimbursed as part of the national health insurance system. The data comprised almost 41,000 children and young people who had started treatment in Finland. The duration of medication treatment was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis.

In 2019, the last year of the studies data, the prevalence of ADHD medication was 5 to 6 percent for boys and 1.3-1.5 percent for girls. Since then, the use of ADHD medication has increased both worldwide and in Finland, where the increase was even faster than in other Nordic countries.

“We know that the proportion of Finnish children and adolescents who use ADHD medication in Finland has been doubling for years in which we have carried out our research,” says Ruokoniemi.