I can’t believe this | ADHD Information

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=20433

What does it mean?

hello steven - kinda interesting article!  i think you are being rhetorical when you ask what does it mean but just in case (i am a little too literal at times):

it said that in blood tests of twelve children - taking methyphenidate caused chromosonal abnormalites in all of them after three months ---

and they haven't yet presumably finished the test to see whether, when they stop the methylphenidate, the chromosonal abnormalities revert to normal or not.

i guess.

but i would reckon - with dex and stimulants they have been around a long time and been used on children since the 30s i think and there has been no obvious overload of cancer or similar so i would have thought it would already have been noticed in those 30s/40s/50s kids who apparently have lived full lifespans...

in fact, i would be far more worried if i were a parent about the effect of SNRIs for sure!!!  this is the guinea pig generation for SNRIs - absolutely nobody can be sure that they won't end up with alzheimers at age 35 for example.  until they get to that age - scientists can't say (they can presume) but they can't be 100% sure what the effect of messing with the norehephrine (or whatever) of a developing child's brain will do in the future at all --- i mean they could all end up with chronic manic depression from a result of over-compensation for the effect of SNRIs or that weird sleeping thing (like that Robin Williams film) who knows!  if i was going to medicate i would chose the stims over the SNRIs a hundred times over - that's for sure!  just my feeling i guess.

it is all a risk - and a very minimal one probably.  like most things in life.

pity the poor guys here in England - they had some medical trial and six healthy young men have ended up in intensive care - fighting for their lives - they blew up all purple and swollen with a complete collapse of their immune systems as a reaction to this trial drug to help treat leukemia (i think) --- nothing in the previous animal tests had shown that this was likely and it is possible it was some sort of human 'dosing' error - but sometimes humans just react differently and that's it!

i hope they will be alright in the end although it seems doubtful according to the newspapers --- they were, in the main, just students supplementing their income... studying law etc., young with girlfriend and family - normal guys.  it's well paid but ..... not sure i would do it.

I think it goes without saying that any drug is a risk.  Drugs for ADD and ADHD are not without risk. We all risk the side effects.  We all risk the unknown with these drugs also.

We can keep watching and studying to see whether scientists and doctors conduct more research into the medications that we use and hold dear because they work so well for us and for our children.

I am glad there are forums like this to help us see the first studies and how they might affect us.

I know that people have been using these drugs for quite a while and there have been no serious ties to cancer in the past.

But the use of these drugs in children has been relatively new to our society.  We may or may not suffer later from the effects.  It is an unknown now.  It is a risk we take to make life better for our children.

I know I worried about whether to take medication or not.  My doctor reassured me that there were no known serious side effects.  Well, perhaps these drugs increase our risk for cancer and we have not made the connection? 

I hope they do more studies so that we can make clear cut decisions instead of murky ones.

I am glad I found the book Stopping ADHD because it has given me a drug free method that has helped me so much with my symtoms of ADD.  It has been wonderful.  Read the post in the alternative thread called "crawlers unite" if you want to learn more about these exercises or the theory behind them.  It makes total sense.  I am not on medication now, and my life is getting better all the time as far as ADD symptoms go.  It costs only the amount of the book to do the whole program.  It is well worth anybody's time to try them.

 

DR. VITIELLO: A question more about the methodology of the test actually. You said that it had been shown to have validity, predictive validity, that aberration, cytogenetic changes actually predict an increased risk of cancer.
Still my understanding is this methodology is not routinely used in drug development. It's relatively simple, it's in vivo, it's in humans, it's low tech. Still it is not part ? you listed a lot of other tests. Why is that?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: Yes, it's a real good question. I've actually been an advocate of including it.
Now we do, as part of drug development, we do chromosomal aberration studies in human cells in vitro, and also in animals. But we don't do it as part of the clinical trial.
And I think the reason is, sponsors don't do it, one, we haven't insisted on it, but also, let's say you do see an increase. What do you tell the participants in the trial?
You can't say that your individual risk is increased, even though we've seen an increase in aberrations for you. Because we can't talk about individuals; we can only talk about a group.
So then there are issues of what do you tell participants. What are the liability issues associated with seeing such an increase?
DR. VITIELLO: Isn't that the same on any safety test, that you can may find a group difference that applies potentially to all the patients who receive the medication but not necessarily to the individual level. I don't see the difference.
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: Well, I think the difference here is, A, you probably are thinking about doing this in healthy volunteers in phase one studies, and also, the health impact would not be seen theoretically for many, many years, probably decades, after exposure. So are you going to continue to monitor these people then for their whole lives? How do you deal with a positive observation? It's not that straightforward.
DR. NELSON: Richard, did you have your hand up?
DR. GORMAN: With the lack of all previous evidence, or most previous evidence, pointing away from these agents as potentially carcinogenic or mutagenic or chromosomal affective, what motivated these researchers to look at this particular methodology to study this drug in this patient population?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: If you look at their paper, their motivation was, one, the large number of children on the drug, and the fact that it's increasing.
The couple of in vitro findings of increased chromosomal aberrations, the sister chromatid exchanges, and the one observation of the liver tumors in the mouse study.
DR. GORMAN: Given the long clinical history of these drugs in large populations of use, is there a particular target cancer we should be looking at as a potential outcome of?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: The data that we have would not suggest a particular ? I mean aside from the El-Zein paper we wouldn?t be looking at all. So there is really no basis for looking at a particular kind of cancer.
DR. NELSON: Dennis, and then Michael.
DR. BIER: I just wanted to know a little more about the predictability issue. I mean is this a predictability issue when you have one hit, and an acute set of studies where you find this, and then the medication stops and then we're talking about cancer 20 years later? Or is this a repeated hits in people who take the medication over time?
What's the predictability? Is this from acute studies or is this from repeated studies?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: You mean --
DR. BIER: Well, if you have a positive chromatid exchanges, is that from a set of studies where we measured this once when a person started on the medication and gets cancer later? Or are you just talking about the frequency of those exchanges in people who have cancer?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: Oh, no, no, these endpoints are indicative of genetic changes that are occurring as a result of some exposure which initiate the carcinogenic process that results in a tumor 20, 30, 40 years later.
DR. BIER: Are there any data on these kind of specific tests done in the population prospectively now for cancers later?
DR. JACOBSON-KRAM: Not that I'm aware of. That would be a difficult study to do. It would take 30, 40 years to do that. Now, for example, you can ? there are some chemicals which are known to be human carcinogens. We know that epidemiologically. We can then lo ok at populations who are exposed to those chemicals, and also controls. And what we find is, in fact, those people with the exposures have higher frequencies of these markers.
Source:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac..._Transcript.pdf
So if you got gene damage your risk increases that you develop a tumor 20, 30 or 40 years later.http://psychrights.org/Drugs/cytogenetic-ritalin.pdf.IMac38947.4501157407

I wonder why the article is from 1 year ago and if there are other studies performed thought...

damn... look at this:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi =B6T54-4HK03GH-2&_user=10&_handle=V-WA-A-W-AE-MsSAYV W-UUW-U-AAVZBDBCEU-AAVBECVBEU-DZCEYUBUD-AE-U&_fmt=full&a mp;_coverDate=01%2F08%2F2006&_rdoc=18&_orig=browse&a mp;_srch=%23toc%234992%232006%23997689998%23613399!&_cdi =4992&_artOutline=Y&view=c&_acct=C000050221& _version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=34cf9a6f 2f8a381269d7db396a245f6a#bibl001

Steven D38807.5746643519I don't know, but I'm afraid, very, very afraid.  But what to do?  What's the recourse??  I know my grand-daughter's life has greatly changed for the better (as has all of ours!) since she was started two years ago on the Metadate CD.  The ramifications one would see after stopping this drug might even be worse than a change in chromosomes.  I literally am sick to my stomach after reading that article, and being it's "Arthur Anderson, in Texas" that makes it even more chilling since it's such a reknowned and respected hospital. LRM21638807.5663541667Is there anything that does not cause cancer anymore?  I saw an article that anti-persperant caused cancer.  Ohhh and cellphones too!  We are doomed!