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Large Genetic Study Finds First Genes Connected With ADHD (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the first-of-its-kind dept.

A paper published in Nature Genetics this week looked at genetic data from more than 50,000 people, finding 12 different regions of DNA that seemed to play a role in increasing ADHD risk. Ars Technica reports: This evidence comes from a genome-wide association study, or GWAS: a close look at how the DNA of people with ADHD differs from those without. Geneticist Ditte Demontis and her colleagues used data from more than 20,000 people with ADHD, comparing them to a control group of 35,000 people without an ADHD diagnosis. They found 304 points where tiny differences in DNA -- like single letter swaps -- were distributed across their two groups in a statistically telling way. If any of those variants were very close together, the researchers counted them as representing the same stretch of DNA, grouping them together into 12 important regions.

There were correlations between the genetic risk for ADHD and a range of other conditions, including depression and anorexia. That ties in with the idea that genetic variation might be important in a way that plays out system-wide. Some of the genes they identified are also known to be involved in other neurological conditions, including speech and learning disabilities, depression, and schizophrenia.

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Makes sense by jblues · · Score: 3, Funny

    Doh, I was going to make the first post, mentioning this, however I got distracted.

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    If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
  2. Please leave these alone by Felix+Da+Rat · · Score: 2

    If humanity is to have any hope, it's going to come from the ADHD side of things. Cure all the diseases you want to, but please for the love of god, allow the natural flowering of creativity.

    Don't allow us to make drones and brainiacs - that will snuff out the species faster than any other eugenics program could.

    1. Re:Please leave these alone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That might be the case, but I'm not completely convinced. (Going AC because this shit is too personal).

      It's a vague diagnosis to begin with and it almost seems like today some wear it like a badge of honor and think they're somehow smarter than everyone else. Or at least they think maybe the drugs they get make them better students.

      I was diagnosed as "hyperactive" back in the '70s largely due to pressure on my resistant parents from a private school principal. Yes, a doctor did the actual diagnosing, but my parents thought I got into trouble sometimes because I was a bad kid. I never heard the terms ADHD or ADD until years later.

      My parents didn't like me being on Ritalin so after a year or two they switched to the Feingold Diet which seems like complete junk science to me now that I look at it as an adult.

      I can't remember if either had any effect on me at all other than it being a pain in the ass to take pills at first and then later to have to explain to my friends that I wasn't allowed to have a whole bunch of different kinds of foods including a goddamned chocolate bar (with few exceptions. Mounds was okay, but just about anything else was off limits.)

      By middle school we abandoned all that shit and I did reasonably well academically all the way through college when I graduated and became a regular part of the workforce.

      I know I'm intelligent (and fairly creative) and it's easy to accept the idea that I'm the smartest person in the room* so why should I try hard? That really did me in during Differential Equations in college. The first few weeks were so easy I started doing crosswords in class and blowing off homework until midterms when I suddenly realized I had a lot of catching up to do.

      And while I'm intelligent and have been reasonably successful in life, I've never done anything great or even noteworthy.

      I'm not sure if I really had ADHD back then or if I still suffer from it today. I know that sometimes I can concentrate for hours on something like software development, but at other times I find myself reading or watching a movie and suddenly realize that while my eyes may have been processing what's on a printed page or a screen, I have no idea what the hell is going on because my mind had wandered off somewhere in the complete opposite direction.

      But that doesn't happen all the time. Maybe it's just that I had things on my mind and that's completely normal.

      And if I do have ADD how is that related to my abuse of alcohol, if at all? Where does my social anxiety fit in? Maybe I'm mildly autistic?

      * - just a footnote. A lot of times I've been pretty sure I was one of the smartest in the room if not the smartest. I actually think I do better and am more comfortable when I know for a fact that I'm not the smartest person in the room or at least feel like I'm among people of similar levels of intelligence.

    2. Re: Please leave these alone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The diagnosis is not really vague. There are specifics.
      If you don't really meet them strongly, you probably don't have it.
      I have a son with it and we knew even when he was a baby that he was different. Turns out he matches the textbook symptoms and it is only with medicine that he can cope with his disability, i.e, participate successfully in society, and he has only a moderate case. None of his other brothers have ADHD.

    3. Re:Please leave these alone by JMJimmy · · Score: 2

      I have ADHD-Inattentive type - it destroys every aspect of my life and offers no benefits in return. If they had a genetic therapy available, I would take it in a heartbeat.

    4. Re:Please leave these alone by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

      If humanity is to have any hope, it's going to come from the ADHD side of things. Cure all the diseases you want to, but please for the love of god, allow the natural flowering of creativity.

      Don't allow us to make drones and brainiacs - that will snuff out the species faster than any other eugenics program could.

      ADHD != "the natural flowering of creativity".

      ADHD actually gets in the way of creativity by making it difficult to focus.

  3. Took long enough! by wolfheart111 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Researchers kept getting distracted :(

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  4. ADHD, the disease of not wanting to be confined by Jarwulf · · Score: 3, Informative

    in a four wall box all day long doing meaningless tasks for a giant abstract system or learning to do meaningless tasks for a giant abstract system that normal healthy humans naturally want to do.

  5. Re: ADHD, the disease of not wanting to be confine by Jarwulf · · Score: 2

    Yeah thats every kid diagnosed and strung on Ritalin because their soccer mom can't handle them.