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Stimulant Use May Increase Heart Damage Risk in Young Adults With ADHD
Stimulant use for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could increase risk of heart damage in young adults, according to recent results published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“This underscores the need for a deeper understanding of the cardiovascular risks tied to ADHD stimulant medications, highlighting concerns about safety and the importance of considering alternative treatments,” said Pauline Gerard, a second-year medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado, and the study’s lead author.
Related: ADHD Medication Use, Particularly Stimulants, Tied to Fewer Hospitalizations
The retrospective cohort study used the TriNetX database to analyze patients aged 20-40 who had been diagnosed with ADHD. Patients were categorized by stimulant medication use (or lack thereof) and length of patient record (1 to 10 years). The study assessed the incidence of cardiomyopathy indicated by specific International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes potentially linked to stimulant use (I42.0, I42.7, I42.8-9) within 30 years of ADHD diagnosis, employing statistical analysis within TriNetX.
Among 12,759 matched pairs with a decade-long record, the prevalence of cardiomyopathy was higher in patients prescribed stimulants for longer durations compared to non-stimulant users. The 1-year stimulant group had a 0.36% prevalence of cardiomyopathy while the non-stimulant group had a 0.31% prevalence. The 10-year stimulant group showed a 0.72% prevalence while the non-stimulant group had a 0.53% prevalence. The odds of cardiomyopathy increased with longer stimulant use, reaching a peak at 8 years (1.57-fold odds) before slightly decreasing at 10 years (1.37-fold), according to odds ratios and confidence intervals.
“The longer you leave patients on these medications, the more likely they are to develop cardiomyopathy, but the risk of that is very low,” authors concluded. “I don’t think this is a reason to stop prescribing these medications. There’s very little increased risk of these medications over the long term; it’s a real risk, but it’s small.”
