MONDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be more likely to develop antisocial behavior if they were low birth weight or if they carry a variant of the catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, which is thought to influence prefrontal cortical function, according to a study in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Anita Thapar, M.D., of Cardiff University in Wales, and colleagues studied 240 British school children aged 5 to 14 who had been diagnosed with ADHD or hyperkinetic disorder.
They found a significant association between the COMT val/val genotype and antisocial behavior, and also between antisocial behavior and low birth weight.
"The results of this study have potentially important implications insofar as they suggest that among those with ADHD who are at high risk of early-onset antisocial behavior, possession of a specific risk genotype, the COMT variant val/val genotype, not only predicts antisocial behavior in itself but also increases susceptibility to the effects of prenatal risk as indexed by birth weight," the authors conclude.
Abstract
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