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Childhood ADHD Doubles Depression Risk and Impairs Cognition Into Adulthood
For years, parents heard a reassuring message from clinicians: many children diagnosed with ADHD eventually grow out of it. A major longitudinal study published in Psychiatry Research puts hard numbers on why that reassurance was incomplete.
Adults who carried an ADHD diagnosis in childhood were more than twice as likely to develop major depressive disorder as those without — 18% versus 8% — and continued to perform worse than peers on more than 60% of outcomes measured across mental health, cognition, physical health, and daily functioning nearly two decades later.
What makes the finding actionable rather than merely sobering is how the researchers built the study. By including non-ADHD siblings of diagnosed children alongside unrelated controls, the team could rule out what critics most often cite: that ADHD-related difficulties are really the product of stressful family environments, lower incomes, or shared genetic disadvantage.
The siblings — who share roughly half their DNA with a diagnosed brother or sister and grew up in the same households — showed largely typical adult outcomes. The conclusion is the closest a non-randomized study can come to proving causation: the difficulties adults face after a childhood ADHD diagnosis trace specifically to having the condition, not to the family circumstances that surround it.
Study Links Pesticide Exposure to Earlier or Delayed First Periods in Girls
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Puberty starts at different ages, and scientists are examining whether routine contact with certain chemicals could help shift that timing. One new study from Spain points in that direction, reporting that two pesticide-linked compounds were associated with opposite changes in when girls got their first periods.
According to the University of Granada (via Medical Xpress), researchers at the university and the ibs.granada Biomedical Research Institute looked at 506 girls in Spain to see whether pesticide residues were related to the age of menarche, the first menstrual period. The findings were published in the journal Environmental Research.
To estimate exposure, the scientists tested urine samples taken from the girls between 2013 and 2016, when they were 7 to 10 years old.
The participants lived in Asturias, Guipúzcoa, Sabadell, and Valencia, and the study continued until they were 14 to 16 so the team could note when menarche occurred.
The clearest patterns involved ethylenethiourea (ETU) and TCPy. Girls with higher levels of ETU — a residue from dithiocarbamate fungicides — tended to reach menarche earlier, while detection of TCPy, a chlorpyrifos breakdown product, was tied to later menarche, especially among girls who were overweight or obese.
California High School Suddenly Shuts Down After Toxic Discovery
A Bay Area high school will remain closed until toxic substance control inspectors decide it’s safe for students to head back for the new school year, according to school district officials. The shutdown of Kennedy High School, in Richmond, California, about 20 miles from San Francisco, came after vapor test results showed levels of tetrachloroethylene (PCE) on site, West Contra Costa Unified School District officials said.
“We recognize the urgency of this situation and that this is a concerning update as the start of the school year is rapidly approaching,” district superintendent Cheryl Cotton wrote in an email to the school community. “While the Department of Toxic Substances Control has told WCCUSD that they believe that, based on the preliminary results available, there is no immediate risk to health and safety, further testing is needed in order to verify that it is safe for students and staff to be on campus,” she continued.
Tetrachloroethylene exposure can be harmful to the nervous system, liver, kidneys, and reproductive system. It can also intoxicate unborn children. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that people exposed to tetrachloroethylene, may also be at a higher risk of getting certain types of cancer.
New Research Suggests Limiting Added Sugar Before Age 2 May Lower Risk of Cognitive Decline Decades Later
Parents can help protect their children’s brain health in the long term by making one change now. A new study from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology suggests that limiting sugar intake before the age of two may help protect brain health later in life.
The scientists analyzed the impact of the end of sugar rationing in the United Kingdom in 1953. During World War II, the U.K. rationed sugar and other consumer staples to help stretch limited supplies and save money for the war effort. In the midst of this, an unintended consequence emerged: Those born during the period of rationing had a lower risk for disease later in life.
The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Neurology, found that those who were toddlers during the rationing had a 23 percent lower risk of dementia later in life.
Early Social Media Use Linked to Lower Grades Years Later, Study Finds
Earlier social media use in pre-teens might lead to worse academic performance later in life, according to a new study published Monday in Nature. Based on a survey of more than 5,000 Italian teenagers, researchers from the University of Milano-Bicocca concluded that there is a correlation between how early a student opened a social media account and how much worse they performed academically four years later.
The researchers began by picking a set of students statistically equal in their 5th-grade performance who were not on social media at the time.
According to the findings, students who then opened a social media account in the 6th grade, aka when they were 11-12 years old, scored worse than later social media adopters in standardized maths and Italian exams that they took in the 10th grade, when they were 15-16 years old. The difference in grade results was roughly equivalent to 6 months of schooling, the researchers write.
Harvard Builds AI Toy to Test How Artificial Intelligence Changes Children’s Play
Ed Tech Innovation Hub reported:
Harvard Graduate School of Education researchers have built an AI-enabled toy and begun testing it with children, moving a debate dominated by theory and short experiments into a new laboratory and home-based study. The project will compare children’s interactions with the purpose-built AI toy against their play with traditional, non-AI toys. Researchers plan to examine play behaviors, language use, social interactions, trust and attachment.
Ying Xu, Assistant Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, announced on LinkedIn that the team had “just launched the first phase” of the research. She added that “we built our own AI toy and began testing it with children in the lab.” A longitudinal phase involving participating families is due to follow. That should allow the team to observe whether relationships and patterns of play change as children spend longer with a responsive toy, rather than limiting the evidence to a brief laboratory interaction.
Those results will eventually test questions set out in Artificial Intelligence in Toys: Implications for Child Development and Play, a preprint written by Xu with Harvard researchers Lauren Girouard and Zhonghao Shi.
School Backpack Overload: Heavy Bags Can Strain Kids’ Bodies
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Backpacks can be fashionable and functional, but they can also be too heavy — weighed down by digital devices, musical instruments, sports equipment and more. Some kids carry home a laptop or tablet and textbooks, too. It’s good to be prepared, but kids who walk to school or participate in extracurricular activities may be lugging more than their bodies can handle. Lockers and classroom storage aren’t available everywhere — and a child carrying too much weight might not be ready to learn.
As families begin back-to-school shopping, here’s how to know if your child’s backpack is too heavy, and how to lighten their load. How heavy is too heavy? The modern school backpack has evolved, but it hasn’t necessarily gotten lighter.
Whether students have textbooks, digital devices or both, they often are accompanied by notebooks, water bottles, lunch containers, workout clothes and more. Individually, those items may not seem heavy, but together they can add unnecessary strain to children’s bodies.
