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(Reuters Health) – Being one of the youngest students in a kindergarten class greatly increases the chances that a child will be diagnosed and treated for a hyperactive deficit disorder. Attention (ADHD), concluded a new major American study.
The findings, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that some children have been diagnosed with ADHD, not because they suffer from the disease, but because they are less mature than men. others in their class who may have up to 11 months.
Physicians have seen this trend by examining the rates of diagnosis and treatment based on birth dates and health insurance claim files of more than 400,000 children born from 2007 to 2009.
Before September 1st, the deadline for kindergarten attendance was 34% higher for the youngest children – those born in August – than for the oldest, those born in the previous September.
"Every week after the Sept. 1 break, they are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD," study author Timothy Layton told Reuters Health during a phone interview. . "We were able to show it in a very clean and transparent way."
When researchers examined children in states where the deadline for the start of kindergarten was not set for September 1, children born in August were no more likely to have ADHD.
Because small studies published several years ago have suggested the same thing: "It is surprising that this phenomenon still exists," said Dr. Anupam Jena, lead author of the study, professor of politics and medicine of health at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
His advice to parents: "If a doctor or a teacher is planning to diagnose ADHD and the child is young, he can stop and say, let's see how this child will develop over the next six months or a year. start making recommendations for treatment. "
The results come at a time when more than one in two US children aged 2 to 17 in 20 are taking medication to treat ADHD, and the diagnosis is becoming more common.
There is also a long-standing concern that some children may receive ADHD treatment, even if their vigilance is age-appropriate.
The researchers found that out of 100,000 children born in August, 85.1 were diagnosed with ADHD, compared to 63.6 in September.
The genre also seemed to play a role. In boys, the risk of diagnosing ADHD was 64% higher if they were born in August instead of September. Boys are more likely to be diagnosed in general.
A 28% increase was seen in girls born in August in states that reached the September threshold, but Layton noted that this increase was not significant enough to be statistically significant "because the number of girls diagnosed is lower. "
All children diagnosed with ADHD have not been treated, but the data suggest that "children born in August who were diagnosed with ADHD because of their birthdays in August received more intensive treatment than adults." 39, average child with ADHD born in September, "the Layton team wrote in their report.
The treatment rate per 10,000 children born in August was 52.9, compared to 40.4 per 10,000 children born in September.
Among the limitations of the study is that she did not double-check each diagnosis of ADHD. It is therefore possible that children born in August, since the diagnosis was correctly classified, and children born with ADHD in September were omitted. Due to the database used, only children of parents receiving health insurance provided by their employer were included. children covered by Medicaid or whose parents have no health insurance are not followed.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2BuVlQR The New England Journal of Medicine, online, November 28, 2018.
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