MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK.
Behav Brain Funct. 2011 Jul 13;7:26. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-7-26.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that starts in childhood and frequently persists in adults. In a comparison of adults with ADHD and a matched control sample, we previously showed that abnormal inhibitory processing is typically preceded or accompanied by other processing deficits in adult ADHD. We now compare these data further to additional data from first-degree relatives (fathers) of children with ADHD to identify whether this pattern of abnormal processing shares familial influences with ADHD in adults.
Using a family design, we compared 20 fathers of children with the combined subtype of ADHD with 21 adults with ADHD combined subtype and 20 controls in event-related potential indices of preparatory states and subsequent response inhibition processing as elicited by a cued continuous performance task.
Fathers of children with ADHD exhibited significantly weaker orienting attention to cues and inhibitory processing than the controls but not the ADHD sample.
These findings provide evidence for the familial association of attentional orienting and response inhibition processes with ADHD in adults and indicate a familial and neurobiological link between ADHD in children and adults.
注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）是一种常见的神经发育障碍，始于儿童期，常持续至成年期。在 ADHD 成年患者与匹配对照样本的比较中，我们先前表明，成人 ADHD 中异常的抑制处理通常先于或伴随其他处理缺陷。现在，我们将这些数据与来自 ADHD 儿童一级亲属（父亲）的其他数据进行进一步比较，以确定这种异常处理模式是否与成人 ADHD 存在家族影响。
我们采用家族设计，比较了 20 名患有 ADHD 混合亚型的儿童的父亲、21 名患有 ADHD 混合亚型的成年患者和 20 名对照者，通过线索连续表现任务诱发的预备状态和后续反应抑制处理的事件相关电位指标进行比较。
与对照组相比，ADHD 儿童的父亲表现出明显较弱的线索定向注意和抑制处理能力，但与 ADHD 样本没有区别。
这些发现为 ADHD 成年患者的注意力定向和反应抑制过程的家族关联性提供了证据，并表明儿童和成年 ADHD 之间存在家族和神经生物学联系。
