Study: Heart Risk Not Up With ADHD Drugs

Children who take drugs for attention disorders don’t have a higher risk of heart problems or death, a new study concludes. The study looked at insurance records for two groups of children. More than 240,000 of them had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They took medicines to treat the condition. This group was compared with more than 965,000 children who did not take ADHD medicines. Researchers looked at records for the first 6 months after ADHD drugs were prescribed. There were no strokes or heart attacks among the children taking the medicines. Researchers calculated there would be 6 sudden deaths or cardiac arrests per 1 million children taking the medicines for a year. They estimated there would be 4 per million in the comparison group. But the numbers were very small. Therefore, they said the difference could be the result of chance.