I greatly appreciate Nachums concerns in giving Ritalin and other drugs to kids
and adolescents, and believe that there is a lot of over prescribing of these
medications however I would like to try to keep the situation in proportion -
firstly please note the author of the research's own statement about the
relevance of the results to present day clinical practice :Thanos notes that the
findings from this study cannot be directly
extrapolated to treatment regimes used for ADHD. Also, these studies
were done in healthy animals, not in rodent models of ADHD.
My attitude to treatment of ADD and ADHD is to be very aware of the problems
associated with drug treatment, the importance of correct diagnosis, and also
the problems of not treating kids who have good responses to Ritalin. Some may
respond better or the same to alternative treatments - but not all - and as the
response is usually much slower than the response to Ritalin there are
situations where this can be problematic.
Ritalin is not anywhere near a perfect solution - but it has helped and is still
helping many kids succeed and have good self images where they would otherwise
be likely to fail - drop out and maybe fall into crime and drug taking.
Louise

----- Original Message -----
From: Nachum
To: ADD_ADHD_LD@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 2:57 AM
Subject: [ADD_ADHD_LD] Do common treatments for ADHD increase risk of drug
abuse?


First off to say, "the brain's reward pathways are definitely
influenced by methylphenidate" in the second paragraph has got to be
the
understatement of the month. How about saying warped, posioned, or
corrupted,
but the word influenced is profuond for what it is trying not to say.

A second point. I remember having seen a study several years ago
showing that
adult monkeys who were given Ritalin as babies had less interest in
self
administring cocaine. So on the one hand that sounds good. Less
interst in
drugs, less drug addiction. On the other hand the researchers said
something
smells bad here. This is "good times in a pill," a monkey that does
not want
it is showing a sign of something going haywire in it's brain. A
similiar
study in rats who under went a "forced swim challenge," showed that
the rats
that where medicated as babies "gave up" sooner and drown. A forced
swim
challenge is when a rat is dropped into a bucket of water and timed
how long
they will swim until it gives up on life and drowns. Giving up on the
forced
swim is used as an indication of a loss of interest in life and
depression.
One advantage that a depressed rat under these circumstances has over
a human
child is that he just sits being depressed in his little cage until
someone
drops him into a bucket of water and ends it all for him. A depressed
human
child has a whole medical profession pushing one drug after the next
on him.
The following article is detailing long term harm that Ritalin will
do to a
child's brain. If you throw a little Prozac, Clonidine, Risperdal,
and Valpro
into the mix, with some food artificial food color, MSG, Splenda, and
a lack of
essentail nutrients you now have a designer, glow in the dark child.

Our bodies are built to health themselves. We just need to work on
eliminating
the toxins and giving the basic building blocks we need to build
health.

Kol Tuv
Nachum

Do common treatments for ADHD increase risk of drug abuse?

Parents, doctors, and others have wondered whether common treatments
for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) inadvertently
predispose adolescents to future drug abuse.
The answer may depend on the age at which treatment is started and
how long it lasts, say the authors of a new brain-imaging and
behavioral study conducted in animals at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. The results appear in the
June 5, 2007 online issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry
and Behavior.

"Our study shows that the brain's reward pathways are definitely
influenced by methylphenidate, one of the stimulant drugs commonly
used to treat ADHD," said Brookhaven researcher Panayotis (Peter)
Thanos, lead author of the study. "But the brain chemistry changes we
observed suggest that the developmental stage at which treatment
begins and the duration of treatment are important variables that
need further study."

In the study, rats were given methylphenidate mixed with distilled
water beginning one month after birth -- early adolescence for rats.
Animals received either 1 or 2 milligrams methylphenidate per
kilogram of body weight, consistent with clinical doses given to
children with ADHD. A control group of rats was handled under
identical conditions but given plain water.

After two months of treatment, and again after eight months, the
scientists performed positron emission tomography (PET) scans to
measure the levels of dopamine D2 receptors, a type of brain receptor
important for experiencing reward and pleasure that has been linked
to pleasure and drug abuse. After the eight-month treatment, animals
were also tested for their propensity to self-administer cocaine.

Rats given the 2mg/kg dose of methylphenidate were significantly less
likely to press a lever to self-administer cocaine, and received
fewer self-initiated infusions of the drug following eight months of
treatment than the lower-dose group or the control rats.

The changes observed in brain chemistry were specific to the age and
duration of methylphenidate treatment: Specifically, after two months
of treatment, brain scans revealed that both groups of treated rats
had lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors in their brains than did
control animals.

In contrast, after eight months of treatment, the brain scans
revealed elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors in treated rats
compared with controls, with the higher-dose treatment group showing
the highest level of D2 receptors. In the control group, D2 receptor
levels declined with age.

Research at Brookhaven and elsewhere has suggested that low levels of
dopamine D2 receptors may increase the likelihood of drug abuse,
while elevated levels of dopamine D2 receptors may attenuate the
propensity to abuse drugs.

"This new study provides evidence that chronic methylphenidate
treatment begun in adolescence affects the brain's dopamine D2
receptor levels, and thus the brain's reward circuitry, differently
depending on the age and treatment duration," Thanos said. The
scientists' observation of lower rates of cocaine self-administration
in the animals treated for eight months with a 2kg/mg dose of
methylphenidate supports this idea.

However, the observation of lower levels of D2 receptors after two
months of treatment suggests that shorter lengths of treatment or the
age at which treatment is evaluated could result in different
effects. "Lower dopamine D2 receptor levels following short-term
treatment could make the animals more vulnerable to drug self-
administration during early adulthood," Thanos said. "Unfortunately,
we cannot compare cocaine self-administration following eight months
of treatment with that obtained after two months of treatment in the
same animals, since animals were not tested for cocaine self-
administration at this earlier time," Thanos said. "We wanted to
avoid any confounding effect that might have resulted from cocaine
exposure during this early developmental stage," he explained.

Evaluating the effect of treatment duration is one avenue the
researchers are exploring in follow-up studies "to help assess
optimal duration of treatment regimes to minimize adverse effects on
the propensity to abuse drugs," Thanos said.

Thanos notes that the findings from this study cannot be directly
extrapolated to treatment regimes used for ADHD. Also, these studies
were done in healthy animals, not in rodent models of ADHD. All
experiments were conducted in conformity with the National Academy of
Sciences Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and Brookhaven
National Laboratory Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
protocols.





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