May 25, 2024, Psychiatric Times: Longitudinal Study Looks at Risk of Cardiovascular Disease With Long-Term ADHD Medication Use
Recent decades have seen increased medication use for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including both stimulants and nonstimulants. However, long-term effects of ADHD medications on the cardiovascular system are not fully understood.
There is limited evidence on whether long-term use is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), with most prior studies having an average follow-up time of no more than 2 years.
This study used the nationwide health registers in Sweden to assess the associations between the use of ADHD medications and CVD over the course of 14 years. . . .
This was a population-based case-control study looking at all individuals in Sweden aged 6 to 64 years who either had an incident diagnosis of ADHD or had been prescribed ADHD medication between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2020. Excluded from the study were patients with a previous CVD diagnosis, those who used ADHD medication for other indications, and those who had emigrated or died before the baseline.
In this study, the investigators defined baseline (cohort entry) as the date of incident ADHD diagnosis or ADHD medication dispensation, whichever event came earlier. Patient demographics including diagnosis, medication dispensation history, socioeconomic factors, and death information were obtained from multiple Swedish nationwide registries: the Swedish National Inpatient Register, the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register, the Longitudinal Integrated Database for Health Insurance and Labor Market Studies, and the National Cause of Death Register. . . .
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