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An Investigation into the Long-Term Effects of Stimulant Medication Use in the Treatment of Children and Adults With ADHD

Capstone
2019

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Description

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an increasingly diagnosed disorder whose mainstay treatment has been stimulant medications for many years. While the short-term effects of stimulant medications have been well documented, a consensus has not been reached as to their long-term effects. The goal of this paper is to investigate long term effects of stimulant medication used in the treatment of ADHD in children and adults. Using a full systematic review, we searched scholarly article databases for a variety of study methods focused on the long-term effects of stimulant medications in ADHD patients. What we found was a great number of researchers postulating on the long-term effect of stimulants, but with few conclusions as to what the long-term effects are. Some well documented side effects of stimulants are childhood growth retardation (GR) as well as heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) elevation but these have been largely found to resolve after discontinuation of stimulant therapy. Researchers found however, that there may be long term complications from even the temporary side effects listed above, leading to long term cardiovascular risk factors (RF). These RF can then lead to elevated mortality due to cardiac events such as cardiac arrhythmias or sudden cardiac death. In conclusion, the global evidence for long term complications of stimulants seems to point to reversible stressors on the body that can later manifest themselves primarily in a cardiac nature. In light of documentation of long-term effects of stimulant medications used in the treatment of ADHD, there arises an obvious need for larger scale and more aggressive studies conducted to further inform the medical community as to the long-term risks associated with the use of these medications.
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Record Data:

Program:
Physician Assistant Studies
Location:
Knoxville
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