The researchers of the Medical University of South Carolina Center for Biomedical Imaging In Charleston they recently observed that young patients with Attention deficit and hyperactivity (ADHD)who had never received a specific pharmacological treatment for the disorder, they had in the brain level iron levels lower if compared with similar cases that had instead received treatment with psychostimulants.
The study involved 22 subjects with ADHD (in an age group between eight and eighteen years) – 12 of whom had never received any treatment with stimulants while the remaining 10 had been treated with this class of drugs.
The group of 22 subjects with ADHD It was compared with a control group consisting of 27 healthy subjects. The three groups studied did not differ by age, sex, intellectual quotient and ethnic group of belonging.
The cases that had received a specific treatment with psychostimulants had levels of cerebral iron similar to that detected in healthy control subjects, making it assumed that the intracerebral iron levels could reach normal values by treatment with psychostimulants.
In subjects not treated with psychostimulants i low iron levels They were mainly detected at the level of the striage and the thalamus.
There have been not observed between groups differences in the levels of iron in the blood and this could assume that in theADHD There may be exclusively an abnormal iron absorption of iron at the brain.
It is important to highlight this observation because this means that an increase in the administration of iron, by mouth or relative is not of any usefulness, indeed it could be toxic to high dosages.
Currently the diagnosis of ADHD It is based on behavioral assessments and semi -structured interviews with parents and with the child.
If the evidence of a significant reduction in intracerebral iron levels should be confirmed in studies on wider champions, this data could be used as physiological biomarker for the ADHDin particular in those cases to the limit, with dubious diagnosis, and could also be used to monitor the effectiveness of the pharmacological treatment.
