ADHD brain signals
December 5, 2011
A NEW study has linked attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) with alterations in specific
genes.
The study, published in Nature
Genetics, undertook wholegenome
analyses of 1,000 children
with ADHD recruited at The
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia,
and compared it to whole-genome
analyses 4,100 children without
ADHD.
During the comparison,
researchers looked for copy
number variations (CNVs), which
are deletions or duplications of
DNA sequences.
Researchers then evaluated
these initial findings in multiple
independent cohorts that included
nearly 2,500 cases with ADHD and
9,200 control subjects.
The cohorts revealed four genes
with a significantly higher number
of CNVs in children with ADHD.
The four genes are members of
the neurotransmitting glutamate
receptor gene family and affect
nerve transmission, the formation
of neurons and interconnections in
the brain.
“The fact that children with
ADHD are more likely to have
alterations in these genes
reinforces previous evidence that
the GRM pathway is important in
ADHD,” said study head Dr Hakon
Hakonarson, who is director of the
Center for Applied Genomics at
The Children’s Hospital of
Philadelphia.
“Our findings get to the cause of
the ADHD symptoms in a subset of
children with the disease,” he
added.
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