Doctors have issued a warning about the long-term effects of Adderall after a study suggested the drugs may cause heart damage.
Researchers at the University of Colorado looked at Americans between the ages of 20 and 40 who were prescribed Adderall or Ritalin for their ADHD.
They found that patients were almost 60 percent more likely to have a weakened heart eight years after taking them compared to people who also had ADHD but were not taking those medications.
Stimulant drugs They work by altering levels of chemicals in the brain to improve concentration and attention, but there are concerns that they may also raise blood pressure by making the heart beat faster and harder.
Over time, this can weaken the heart and cause the heart muscle to become thicker, stiffer, and larger. This can lead to irregular heartbeats, heart failure, or a life-threatening condition called cardiac arrest.
The rate of women in their 20s filling prescriptions for ADHD medications, such as Adderall, increased nearly 20 percent between 2020 and 2021. That rate among adult men ages 30 to 39 increased nearly 15 percent in that time .
The graph above shows ADHD rates in the US compared to other countries.
It comes amid fears that ADHD is being overdiagnosed and that the powerful stimulants used to treat it have been overprescribed.
One in seven children ages 5 to 17 currently suffers from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in the United States, a recent report suggested.
The medications have other unpleasant side effects, such as insomnia, increased irritability, and anxiety. In severe cases, they can cause seizures, hallucinations and psychosis.
Researchers at the University of Colorado emphasized that the overall risk of cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart muscle that reduces its ability to pump blood through the body) remained “relatively low,” even when stimulants were used long-term.
The academics said their findings do not necessarily point to the need for doctors to change their approach to detecting the developmental disorder in patients or prescribing medications.
For example, to put it in context, after being prescribed stimulants for 10 years, only 0.72 percent (less than three-quarters of one percent) of patients developed cardiomyopathy, compared with 0.53 percent. percent (a little more than half of one percent) among those prescribed stimulants for 10 years. non-prescribed stimulants.
In some cases of cardiomyopathy, the heart rhythm is disturbed, causing arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats).
Long-term risks of arrhythmias include life-threatening stroke, heart failure, or cardiac arrest.
Researchers at the University of Colorado found that people who were prescribed stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin were 57 percent more likely to have a weakened heart eight years after taking them, compared to those who did not take these medications.
Using data from about 80 U.S. hospitals, researchers analyzed information from people diagnosed with ADHD between the ages of 20 and 40.
People with heart damage caused by other known factors, such as cancer treatments, were excluded.
The researchers matched each person who had been prescribed stimulants with someone who had not been prescribed but who was similar in other ways such as age, sex and health conditions, and who also had ADHD.
In total, 12,759 pairs were created and followed for at least 10 years.
People taking ADHD medications were 17 percent more likely to have cardiomyopathy after a year of taking the medications, the study found.
And 57 percent of those who had used drugs for eight years were more likely to have a weakened heart.
Despite the gap, the prevalence of cardiomyopathy was still quite low in both groups.
Pauline Gerard, a second-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado, and lead author of the study, put the numbers in context: “You can have almost 2,000 patients taking these drugs for a year and it’s It’s possible that “It just causes one of them to have cardiomyopathy that they otherwise wouldn’t have had, but if you leave them like that for 10 years, that’s going to happen to 1 in 500.”
Ms Gerard added: “The longer patients are left taking these medications, the more likely they are to develop cardiomyopathy, but the risk of this occurring is very low.”
‘I don’t think this is a reason to stop prescribing these medications. There is very little increased risk from these medications in the long term; It is a real risk, but small.”
The rising rates of ADHD come amid warnings from psychologists that the prevalence in the U.S. is too high and is causing many children to unnecessarily take medications used to treat the condition.
The market value of ADHD medications such as Adderall and Ritalin more than tripled in the 12 years to 2022, reaching $12.5 billion. Estimates suggest it could reach almost $15 billion by 2030.
The late Dr. Keith Connors was a former Harvard University psychologist who published the first standards for diagnosing ADHD in the 1990s.
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic,” he said in 2013, five years before his death. ‘Well, it’s not. It’s stupid.
“This is a concoction to justify the delivery of medicines at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”
ADHD is defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects an individual’s ability to concentrate, control impulses, and regulate energy levels.
It is usually diagnosed in childhood, around age six or seven, but in many cases it persists into adolescence and adulthood.