Increased Toxicity Risk Identified For Children With ADHD, Autism
A study published in 2023 revealed there's a difference in how children with autism or ADHD clear the common plastic compound bisphenol A (BPA), compared to neurotypical children.
BPA is used in a lot of plastics and plastic production processes, and can also be found inside food and drink cans. However, previous research has also linked it to health issues involving hormone disruption, including breast cancer and infertility.
Researchers from Rowan University and Rutgers University in the US looked at three groups of children: 66 with autism, 46 with ADHD, and 37 neurotypical kids. In particular, they analyzed the process of glucuronidation, a chemical process the body uses to clear out toxins within the blood through urine.
They found that kids with ASD and ADHD couldn't clear out BPA and another similar compound called diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) with as much efficiency as other kids, potentially leading to longer exposure to their toxic effects.
"Detoxification of these two plasticizers is compromised in children with ASD and ADHD," wrote the researchers in their published paper. "Consequently, their tissues are more exposed to these two plasticizers."
It was only in the case of BPA that the difference was statistically significant though: the efficiency was reduced by about 11 percent for kids with ASD and 17 percent for kids with ADHD, compared with the control group of children.
The researchers think that gene mutations in certain individuals mean that BPA can't be cleared as well as it needs to be, which means the substance sticks around in the body. That potentially could cause damage in terms of neuron development and operation.
Conditions like ASD and ADHD are thought to involve a combination of genetic and environmental influences, and this new study brings together both of them. However, it's only part of the story – not every child with a neurodevelopmental disorder had problems flushing out BPA, so there are other factors at play, too.
Work is continuing to identify how exactly ASD and ADHD develop in people – whether it's in utero before birth for example, or later on in life – as the data isn't enough to show whether BPA exposure causes either disorder.
"There is an extensive body of epidemiological evidence for a relationship between neurodevelopmental disorders and environmental pollutants such as plasticizers," the researchers wrote.
"How important plasticizer originated neurodevelopmental disorder is in the overall occurrence of these disorders is not known, but it must account for a significant proportion or would not have been so easy to detect in a metabolic study of moderate size such as this study."
The research was published in PLOS ONE.
A version of this article was first published in October 2023.
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Newsweek
4 hours ago
- Newsweek
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With more and more young children and families spending time on technology and living in their individual silos this can have detrimental impacts on these areas of development," educational psychologist Emily Crosby, who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek. "The first three years—or 1,001 days—are the most important years for a child as this is also when a child forms an attachment style that will impact on their later attachments, even into their later romantic relationships. A child who has an anxious, insecure or avoidant attachment may be more hypervigilant which can present as attention difficulties. "It is about supporting parents early on to provide an optimal secure attachment so a child feels safe and secure [including helping parents to work on their own childhood experiences]." Little smiling boy holding the leg of his dad. Little smiling boy holding the leg of his dad. 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Let us know via health@ Reference Rokos, L., Bray, S. L., Neudorf, J., Samson, A. D., Shen, K., & McIntosh, A. R. (2025). Examining Relationships between Functional and Structural Brain Network Architecture, Age, and Attention Skills in Early Childhood. eNeuro, 12(7).
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Medscape
3 days ago
- Medscape
ADHD: Not a Diagnosis but a Warning Label
The title of a recent article in The New York Times asks, 'Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?' How would you answer this question? My response would be a robust 'You're darn right we have!' I am a member of a shrinking cohort of primary care pediatricians who practiced before the phenomenon of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appeared on the landscape. I have always been troubled by how the handful of hyperactive grade schoolers I was seeing in the 1970s could mushroom into something that prompted the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to report last year more than 11% of American children had been diagnosed with ADHD. I don't include myself in the 'we' to whom the writer refers. I have never been able to imagine that a seismic genetic shift could explain the sudden emergence of a new disease that lacks solid diagnostic criteria or a biophysical marker. Radiation from solar flares and chemicals leached from the nonstick surfaces on our pots and pans just don't seem to be likely answers. William Wilkoff, MD The New York Times article comes the closest to encapsulating an explanation I have constructed over the past 50 years of observing the ADHD phenomenon unfold. Clearly, something has changed. But it has eluded those looking for some biophysical cause. Although stimulant medications have been associated with observable changes in behavior in some situations, these have usually been temporary. The effectiveness of the medications has never seemed to warrant the millions of stimulant pills that are prescribed to children and young adults every year in this country. Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke, a neuroscience and psychiatry researcher at King's College London, was quoted in the article as saying, 'We have a clinical definition of A.D.H.D. that is increasingly unanchored from what we are finding in our science.' He goes on to say that clinicians can't objectively measure and define a natural category of individuals with ADHD. His observation makes one wonder how much of the ADHD research has been valid. Some of the new thinking about ADHD comes from a re-examination of the landmark MTA study, which demonstrated that the effects of the medication were statistically significant at 14 months. However, they had lost their significance at 36 months. Even more interesting is the more recent observation that 40% of the control group in that study who did not qualify for an ADHD label in 1999 were later diagnosed with ADHD in adolescence, suggesting that something extrinsic had changed over time. Other studies referred to in the New York Times article have shown that although stimulant medication improved behavior and the speed of work, there was no demonstrable improvement in learning. 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Take, for example, the kindergarten student who didn't attend preschool and who has just turned 5 at the start of the school year. Or the 13-year-old hands-on learner who did 'okay' in grade school but now finds himself thrust into the college track in high school with a heavy emphasis on reading and classroom lectures. Or a 30-something who has found himself in a job in which he is struggling to keep up with his supervisor's demands. This view of ADHD symptoms, not as a single condition but as an expression of a mismatch between a person's capabilities (both physical and emotional) and their environment, includes the assumption that the population is made up of individuals with a wide range of vulnerabilities. Some are more easily tipped into demonstrating ADHD-like symptoms at times of stress, whereas others are more resistant. At one end of this spectrum is a small group of children who were born with a neurochemical makeup that makes them highly likely to exhibit ADHD symptoms. Individuals with fetal alcohol syndrome are probably the best example of a group that may have an identifiable biomarker. Although it is likely that research will identify a mechanism to explain the ADHD-like symptoms in this very small subset, it is much less likely that a similar mechanism or structure will explain the spectrum of vulnerabilities in the general population in the short term. However, if and when a biomarker is discovered in the general population, we must be careful about the chicken-and-egg situation. Was the environment-individual mismatch a result of altered structure or chemistry, or did the stress associated with the mismatch trigger the observed change? Finally, let's consider what may be the most common example of a mismatch between the individual's biological makeup and their environment: sleep deprivation. When people are made sleep-deficient, they exhibit symptoms often linked with ADHD, such as slower reaction times, attention difficulties, mood changes, and irritability, to name just a few. It has been my observation over five decades of observing children and adults that very often sleep deprivation is a major, if not the most potent, contributor to what others have labeled as ADHD. Then it is not surprising that a stimulant medication in an individual who is sleep deprived will cause a dramatic, although not long-lasting, improvement. One of the most common complaints voiced by persons labeled as having ADHD is that they find school or their job boring. Individuals with boring jobs, such as truck driving or assembly line work dominated by repetitive tasks, can be more productive when they are given a stimulant. If we are looking for a change in the environment that has occurred over the past three quarters of a century to explain the ADHD phenomenon, we need look no further than the well-documented observation that individuals of all ages are getting significantly less sleep. The reasons are too numerous to document in this short column, but the popularity of television and personal electronic devices are obvious examples. Yes, we must look at our educational system to make sure we are creating learning environments in which children who have a variety of skills and vulnerabilities can thrive. Yes, that school environment should be stimulating without being distracting and provide an abundance of physical activity. But we must remember to make sure that families are taught to identify when their child is overtired and how to take appropriate measures to ensure they arrive at school well rested. View ADHD not as a diagnosis but rather a collection of observations of a patient's behavior that should serve as a warning label. This doesn't mean we should completely rule out stimulants as a therapeutic option. However, medication should be considered a temporary step while more definitive steps are being taken to narrow the discrepancy between children's own resources and the environment in which they find themselves.
