Study: ADHD Drugs Not Effective After 24 Months

A fine article is out in the Washington Post today (the link is to page 2 since the WashPo site is being odd today), detailing a cat fight between researchers over how to interpret results of a long-term study of kids getting ADHD meds and kids getting therapy only. Read the article for the debate.

Meanwhile, the raw results of the study are far more interesting.

"In August 2007, the MTA researchers reported the first follow-up data, which by then no longer showed differences in behavior between children who were medicated and those who were not. But the data did show that children who took the drugs for 36 months were about an inch shorter and six pounds lighter than those who did not....

"With the MTA having followed the children for eight years, the latest data have confirmed that there are no long-term differences between children who were continuously medicated and those who were never medicated. Some of the data were published online yesterday in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry...."

"The subgroup analysis found that children in homes that were socially and economically stable did the same in the long term with or without medication. Children from troubled or deprived backgrounds slid backward as soon as the intensive therapy stopped and they went back to their communities. About one-third -- those with the least impairment to begin with -- continued to improve over the long term."

So much for Ritalin and Adderall. I'll have more on this after I get a hold of the study.